Claudia Sinatra

Claudia Sinatra is an urban designer and researcher based in Zurich. Trained as an architect, her expertise lies on the intersection of urban design and spatial planning, with a focus on the facilitation of design processes and dialogue among diverse actors in complex urban transformation projects. Her research interests include socio-spatial practices and their impact on city-making, justice and equity in (public) space, urban geographies of care and intersectional feminist spatial practices.

She joined the SPUR Group as a researcher in July 2022 to support the teaching of the master in Spatial Development and Infrastructure Systems. Since February 2023, she has been co-teaching the Urban Design Studio for Planners course as a lecturer. She previously held positions at multidisciplinary design firms and urban research centres in London, where her work was situated between socio-spatial research and design practice. Projects she has worked on include complex masterplans, public realm schemes, environmental graphics, and placemaking strategies across Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. In addition to teaching, she collaborates with a Zurich-based spatial planning firm, where she prepares urban analysis, potential studies, and strategic spatial concepts from the territorial to the areal scale, along with organizing design competitions and further design processes.

She holds an MSc in City Design and Social Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE – Cities Programme) and a MSc in Architecture from the University of Ferrara (Italy), where she graduated with honours. During her architectural studies she also spent two semesters at the Technical University of Munich (Germany). She is a licensed architect in Italy (RIBA / SIA equivalent) and a member of the Academy of Urbanism - Young Urbanists Network, Frau + SIA as well as of LARES Gender- und Alltagsgerechtes Planen & Bauen, with whom she deepens her interest in gender-sensitive approaches to spatial development.

Within and adjacent to these activities, Claudia works as an independent graphic designer. In her approach, visual narratives and urban research are integrally connected to design within the pursuit of a critical debate around cities, communities, and places.