Sonja Radovic Jelovac, holds a PhD in environmental design and planning. She is a curator of the Montenegrin Presentation Project at the 16th Venice Architectural Biennial 2018. She is engaged in research in the field of resilient, adaptive urban design. She has successfully applied the experimentally transdisciplinary approach and 20 years of design experience through her work at Studio Synthesis, where she is the founder and lead architect.
She completed her primary studies in architecture at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade.
A recipient of a Master’s degree fellowship from the La Sapienza University in Rome at the Ludovico Quaroni Faculty of Archecton, where she obtained her Master’s degree from the Department of “Planning, Landscaping, and Reclamation of Urban Land in Developing Countries” (2005).
As an achiever of an international scholarship to La Sapienza University in Rome, she earned her Ph.D. in 2015 and attained her Doctor Europaeus title. Within the scope of her doctoral thesis, “Projective” Resilience Assessment for Water Sensitive Adaptive Urban Design, she makes an authentic contribution to scientific progress in the field of contemporary research in the field of new paradigms in design and adaptive eco-urban design through the prism of collaborative resilience.
She is engaged as an itinerant professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Podgorica in the subject Urban Design (2014-2016) and at the University of Trento in Italy (2018)
In her role as curator of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale, she conceptualizes the theme “Emerging Resilience” with a proposal to focus on the broader research framework of the Representation Project of Montenegro, citing the need to instrumentalize the principle of resilience in the local context.
She has won numerous international awards and recognitions in the region: Belgrade Urban Planning Salon – two awards, (2015), S. Mitrovica Urban Planning Salon – three awards (2016), two awards at the Architectural Biennale of Architecture in Belgrade, (2016), admission at the Architecture Salon in Belgrade, (2016), special admission at the Third S.ARCH International Conference in Hong Kong (2017), Member of the Jury for the Pavilion of Montenegro Expo Milano 2016, Expo Dubai 2020, BIG SEE WOOD AWARD 2018 and 2019, BIG SEE Architecture Award 2019 – Winner, BIG SEE Interior Design Award 2019 – Winner in Slovenia. She is the author of numerous scientific works and publications.
She is a member of the SACG – the Union of Architects of Montenegro, one of the founders of the ŽAD – Women’s Architectural Society in Belgrade, the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Society of Friends of Kolasin and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Balkan Architectural Biennale.
