results that become the foundation of the next generative phase. The Cityforming, progressing through the stages of colonisation, consolidation and development, produces the necessary “urban oxygen" for the formation of an appropriate ecosystem able to generate a new active metabolism that reactivates inactive cycles, reconnects the broken ones or that actives new ones, more adapted to the new identity of transition places. In 2015 the International Biennial of Architecture in Buenos Aires awarded him with the prize for “academic investigation”. In 2016 and 2017 he won the World's Best Smart City Urban Planners Award promoted by CITYOS Foundation. In 2018 he is part of the curatorial team of the Italian Pavilion "Arcipelago Italia" curated by Mario Cucinella for the 16th Venice Biennale of Architecture and dedicated to the internal areas of the country. He is also part of the project team for the preparation of the strategic project for Belice and Gibellina within the same pavilion. In 2018, together with Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, OMA's partner, he curated the Manifesta 12 Studios exhibition in the context of Manifesta 12, the nomadic Biennale of contemporary art held in Palermo. Over two semesters, four international laboratories from four major schools of architecture (Architectural Association and Royal College of Art in London, the Dutch TU Delft and the University of Palermo) have investigated, studied and outlined future scenarios for the city of Palermo. In 2018 he participated in the TEDx Rimini with a talks entitled "Augmented City: the paradigm of innovation for the cities of the future" dedicated to the new paradigm of augmented cities to inhabit the Neoanthropocene. In 2019 he was Italian Design Ambassador for the Italian Foreign Affairs Ministry, invited to lecture in São Paulo and Porto Alegre (Brasil). In 2020 he is part of the curatorial team of the Italian Pavilion "Resilient Communities" curated by Alessandro Melis for the 17th Venice Biennale of Architecture (postponed to 2021 due to Covid-19). Publications With the book L’armatura culturale del territorio (1999) he inaugurated the Italian line of urban studies about the conservation and valorization of cultural heritage in the frame of European mainstream about city planning fueled by cultural identity, considered both as identity’s matrix tools and sustainable local development. His studies about the territorial cultural armature have produced some applied researches aimed at identifying qualitative and quantitative parameters for the formation of local cultural systems, in western Sicily and in other