Native of Lithuania, Massimiliano Fuksas was born in Rome in 1944, where he graduated in Architecture at "La Sapienza Univesity" of Rome in 1969. In 1967, 1989, and 1993 he established practices in Rome, Paris and Vienna respectively and since 2002 he opened a new studio in Frankfurt. From 1998 to 2000 he was Director of the VII Biennale Internazionale di Architettura di Venezia "Less Aesthetics, More Ethics".

2007- Cubo D'oro Award, Naples.

2007- Winning Award to the project Europark, Salzburg, Austria, by the International Council of Shopping Centres in the category 'Refurbishments and/or Expansions'.

2006- Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

2006- Honorary Fellowship of Cavaliere di Gran Croce of the Italian Republic.

2006- Award of Excellence to the new Trade Fair and Exhibition Centre, Rho Pero, Milan, Italy by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) of Washington D.C., USA.

2005- National Award for Architecture to the new Headquarters of Ferrari, Maranello, by ANCE- IN ARCH 2005.

2005- Member of the Architecture Academy in Paris.

2003- Academic of the International Academy of Architecture in Sofia.

2002- Honorary Fellowship of the American Institute of Architects.

2000- Academic of the National Academy of San Luca, Italy.

2000- Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic.

1998- He received an award in recognition of his professional career at "Vitruvio International a la Trayectoria" in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

From 1994 to 1997 he was a member of the urban commissions of Berlin and of Salzburg. For many years has dedicated his special attention to the study of urban problems and in particular to the suburbs.He is visiting professor at several universities, including the Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture, Paris, France and Columbia University, New York, USA. Since January 2000, Fuksas writes the architecture column of the Italian weekly magazine "L'Espresso".

Massimiliano Fuksas believes in architecture as a tool that can give a form to the contradictions of the modern and post-modern world. He sees the architect as a part of a general process of communicating the change that is taking place in society. WWS's interest in his work derives from this vision. Architecture is essentially art to Fuksas, an art which can modify physical space in response to the life-related needs around it. Using different techniques, it bears witness to the quality and meaning of the social context it springs from, in a timeless fashion. The architect is at the centre of a complex network of connections and interactions. He is a privileged interlocutor, translating the most significant events and problems of the time into distinctive physical features.

As the third millennium gets on its way, the architect's job must necessarily mean coming face to face with globalization and its implications. This phenomenon generates direct and intense competition between cultures and areas where there is potential for socioeconomic activities, leading to the constitution of a new identity for those very cultures and places. Tackling the globalization process means emphasising and promoting specific micro-territorial characteristics. Unsurprisingly, these very characteristics are at risk because of globalization's tendency to standardise. Globalisation and localism may have dissolved their relationship and gone their separate ways, but they still share a common factor, which is a cause of continuing uncertainty in the daily lives of persons, and that is the big city.

Once the place where social development and welfare, as well as security were at home, today cities are a sort of Pandora's box. Hard-to-solve problems jump out, causing frustration, insecurity and fear. These feelings are also visible in the architectural forms of some city areas, especially those that have been built recently.

Cities are going through profound changes. In order to solve their problems, we must reject modern urban planning, with its sterile, readymade, all-purpose designs, in favour of architecture that reflects the rapid changes our society is going through.

In his essay Polis. Dialogo di una sociologia urbana (Polis: Dialogue of an Urban Sociologist), written in 2006 in collaboration with the Italian sociologist Franco Ferrarotti, Fuksas puts forward his ideas for a highly "flexible" city where the monocentric "polis" of the past gives way to multicultural and multicentric megalopolises. But they are still planned with the human dimension in mind, by an architect who senses life with its qualities and strong feelings and gives them back to those who will live there. New development techniques need to start with new disciplinary approaches. And we need to start this by considering multiple viewpoints and the opportunities offered by concepts such as «deglomeration», a new word coined to express the approach to decentralization in the suburbs.

This is because the problem of ensuring a qualitatively significant "view" primarily relates to problematic areas, where degradation and marginalization reign. The difficulties of living are everyday problems here, and it is here that fear is more likely to exist, whatever form it takes. This is the background to understanding the slogan coined for the Venice Biennale in 2000, less aesthetics, more ethics. It is ethics which must shape our future. We must build cities for their inhabitants. We must influence architects to build vital spaces, ones which individuals can determine the shape of, evolve in and feel, rather than merely buildings whose purpose is to satisfy the needs of "shapeless masses" of tourists.