Gaia Crocella
Profession
Lecturer, BA Architecture
College
Central Saint Martins
Person Type
Teacher
Biography
Gaia Crocella is a yogi, spatial practitioner, researcher, educator and host. She is interested in feminist spatial practice and thought, as well as practices of care, dissent and spatial activism. Through creative research, participation and advocacy, she imagines tangible pathways towards more equitable, joyful and just urban environments. Born in Italy and having lived and studied in Sweden and India, Gaia is now based in London. Her cross-cultural trajectory shapes a transnational practice that is deeply sensitive to the diversity of lived experiences, needs and realities that spaces must serve. Her research and practice are predominantly focused on feminist urbanism, gender-inclusive public realm, intercultural and intersectional dialogues, transforming ecologies and forms of situated practices.
Gaia is a lecturer across BA Architecture at Central Saint Martins, UAL, and leads a vertical design studio exploring conviviality and food cultures as design tools to place ecology, cultural identity and social ritual at the heart of urban life. She is a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art, the Architectural Association, and Umeå School of Architecture. She previously taught through the Global Free Unit in Lesvos and Izmir.
As a senior design researcher and urban designer at Publica, she has led research, visions, strategies and design projects across the UK and beyond, working with communities, local authorities and major developers to advance equitable and gender-inclusive public realm design. She is the co-founder of Fritto Misto, an interdisciplinary practice centring conviviality, food and space-making to foster community cohesion and local cultural and ecological narratives. Her wider practice integrates embodiment and holistic thinking — including yoga and coaching, as lenses through which she understands space, care and the city.
She holds a BA and MA in Architecture from Umeå School of Architecture, Sweden, and conducted part of her studies at CEPT University, India. Her MA thesis was nominated for the RIBA Silver Medal and received the Young Talent Architecture Award from the Fundació Mies van der Rohe in 2020.