Andrea Mantello

His practice spans architectural design, urban planning, adaptive reuse, and site-specific light installations passing by product design. His career began through interdisciplinary collaborations with artists and architects, including Gilberto Zorio, Marco Gastini and Zvi Hecker. For almost two decades, Andrea worked as a designer, including his role as architectural principal designer in ACTLD. In 2014 he founded DERA (Design Events Renovation Architecture).

His work on lighting started as research-driven, with a focus on the absence of light in caves. It was implemented by working on darkness and its emotional and experiential impact on spaces, a theme that continues to inform his professional work. Andrea approaches light not merely as a technical requirement but as a conceptual and narrative tool capable of shaping how people experience architecture and landscapes.

Andrea has led DERA through a wide range of projects across multiple scales all over the globe, from award-winning lighting projects to housing developments and urban masterplans, as well as product design and art installations, including public-space interventions. More recently he has also contributed to the regeneration of abandoned alpine settlements and the preservation of vernacular stone architecture. DERA was relaunched in 2024 as an independent practice with an international focus, integrating architecture, urban design, and lighting into a single multidisciplinary vision. Andrea’s recent work continues to investigate darkness and celestial perception, using light to create meaningful connections between people, places, and the environment.