Carlotta de Bellis is a Designer here at JKRP, where she works on our retail team. She is a 2025 graduate of the Master of Architecture program at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a BA in Art History and Communication from Trinity University.
Born in Naples, Italy, and having lived and worked across Italy, France, and the United States, her work is informed by a strong sensitivity to context, history, and public life. Alongside practice, she remains involved in teaching at Penn, having held a lecturer role assisting graduate studios and currently co-teaching a first-year undergraduate design studio.
Get to Know
Biscotti, always dry and not too sweet to dunk in my morning coffee.
I grew up in Naples, Italy, in a family that loves food, just 100 meters from where the pizza Margherita was invented to have the colors of the Italian flag. Growing up surrounded by historic architecture, daily rituals centered on cooking and gathering, and life in an 18th-century apartment shaped my appreciation for culture, craft, and place.
Chichu Art Museum by Tadao Ando in Naoshima, Japan. I first encountered the museum during an architectural fellowship in Japan in 2019, and the experience became a turning point in my decision to pursue architecture. Embedded within the landscape, the building explores how light, material, and movement mediate the relationship between artwork and viewer, producing, as Naomi Pollock describes, a monumental space without monumentality. Having grown up in Naples surrounded by grand buildings and monuments, Ando's restraint and reverence for the land reshaped my understanding of architecture's power, and continues to influence how I approach space, craftsmanship, and context.
What I value most about architecture is its inherently multidisciplinary nature and its reliance on collaboration. Architecture brings together history, design, technology, and social responsibility, requiring constant dialogue with clients, communities, consultants, and fellow designers. At its core, architecture is about people, how they live, move, gather, and find meaning in space, and the discipline's greatest strength lies in its ability to translate collective needs into thoughtful, shared environments.
- BA in Art History and Communication, Trinity University, 2020
- Masters of Architecture, Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, 2025
Get to Know
Biscotti, always dry and not too sweet to dunk in my morning coffee.
I grew up in Naples, Italy, in a family that loves food, just 100 meters from where the pizza Margherita was invented to have the colors of the Italian flag. Growing up surrounded by historic architecture, daily rituals centered on cooking and gathering, and life in an 18th-century apartment shaped my appreciation for culture, craft, and place.
Chichu Art Museum by Tadao Ando in Naoshima, Japan. I first encountered the museum during an architectural fellowship in Japan in 2019, and the experience became a turning point in my decision to pursue architecture. Embedded within the landscape, the building explores how light, material, and movement mediate the relationship between artwork and viewer, producing, as Naomi Pollock describes, a monumental space without monumentality. Having grown up in Naples surrounded by grand buildings and monuments, Ando's restraint and reverence for the land reshaped my understanding of architecture's power, and continues to influence how I approach space, craftsmanship, and context.
What I value most about architecture is its inherently multidisciplinary nature and its reliance on collaboration. Architecture brings together history, design, technology, and social responsibility, requiring constant dialogue with clients, communities, consultants, and fellow designers. At its core, architecture is about people, how they live, move, gather, and find meaning in space, and the discipline's greatest strength lies in its ability to translate collective needs into thoughtful, shared environments.
- BA in Art History and Communication, Trinity University, 2020
- Masters of Architecture, Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, 2025