Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of the Department of Architecture & Design at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York was, coincidentally, born in Sassari, Sardinia. It was 1963 and her father, an otolaryngologist, was working there as he had done previously in Milan, where Antonelli’s brother was born, and as he would later do in Ferrara, where her sister came into the world.

What was not coincidental was her interview at MoMa, in 1994. Antonelli had earned a degree in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano in 1990 and had also curated, designed, written and edited. She wrote an application latter asking for a position in New York and was granted an interview. Since then, she has called the Big Apple home and has never stopped thinking about what design is, and what it could be.