Manuela Gatto is a Director at Zaha Hadid Architects, where she has worked since February 2002. She’s involved in all aspects of project organization, including design and technical team management along with contract administration, fee estimates and contract negotiation.
She has been Project Architect of the Bridge Pavilion, completed for Zaragoza EXPO 2008, of which she supervised all development stages including construction.
She has also been Project Architect of the Zorrozaurre peninsula and for Olabeaga-S.Mames area master plans in Bilbao, and for KutxaBank tower, also in Bilbao.
As Project Director, she has completed the construction of “Hongqiao SOHO”, a 343,410 m² mixed use development promoted by SOHO China and located in Shanghai and is currently developing a 140,000 m² hotel resort in Hainan (south China) for Taj Hotels.
Alongside her role as Project Director, she is actively involved in the management of the office as a whole, managing finances and resources for a cluster consisting in approximately one third of ZHA’s architectural staff.
She studied and gained her professional degree at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (Italy) in 1998. Subsequently, she continued with her postgraduate studies in the field of Advanced Architectural Design at the Design Research Laboratory of the Architectural Association, London, where she received her Master of Architecture degree with Honours in January 2002. Her graduate thesis project has been published under the title “Negotiate My Boundary” by the Architectural Association in 2002 and re-published by Birkhaeuser (2006).
As well as collaborating with Zaha Hadid architects, Manuela has taught in the Intermediate School at the Architectural Association in London for two years.