Lorenzo Apicella was born in Ravello, Italy. He studied architecture at Nottingham University, Canterbury College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. In 1981 he joined Skidmore Owings and Merrill as assistant designer for the 70-story Allied Bank Plaza Building in Houston, Texas. On his return to London, he worked with CZWG architects on alternatives to Mies van der Rohe’s Mansion House Square project. He was subsequently appointed to lead international architecture, design and exhibition projects for Imagination.

In 1989 he established his own practice, Apicella Associates. Clients included The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, The Science Museum, Philips Electronics, ICL, Pepsi, Volvo, Ford, Sharp, La Perla and Virgin Atlantic.

In 1998 he merged his studio with Pentagram, where he became a partner in the London office. From 2006 to 2009, Lorenzo and his design team relocated to Pentagram’s San Francisco office.

Lorenzo’s work includes the design of buildings, mobile structures, interiors, exhibitions and events environments. Published projects include the award winning Research and Design Centre for Adshel; the Clore Centre for Education at the Natural History Museum; an exhibition, Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth at the British Museum; the Self Portrait Zone for the NMEC’s Millennium Dome; ongoing projects worldwide for Citibank; a comprehensive interior design programme for Virgin Upper, Premium and Economy Class cabins, for the entire Virgin fleet (including the award-winning redesign of Virgin’s Upper Class aircraft cabins); new branch interiors for Rabobank, Holland’s second largest high-street bank; two recent buildings in London for Adshel/Clear Channel International; and most recently, a new regional flagship branch building for M&T Bank in Buffalo, New York. He is currently working on a major redesign of the balcony galleries in the Central Hall of the Natural History Museum in London.

Lorenzo has chaired a number of RIBA and Civic Trust awards juries and the AIA awards for Southern California in San Diego. He has been a visiting lecturer at numerous schools of architecture and a regular tutor at the Graduate School of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University. He has acted as an External Examiner to the School of Design at UCE Birmingham and the Royal College of Art in London.

Lorenzo is a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.