Anselmo Canfora, a beloved educator and architect, died on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023, in Charlottesville, Virginia, surrounded by family and friends. Anselmo dedicated most of his professional life, for nearly two decades, to the University of Virginia School of Architecture, as a teacher, designer, researcher, mentor, and administrative leader. From founding Initiative reCOVER at the School of Architecture in 2007 to being recently named the School’s Director of the Center for Design in 2023, Anselmo’s commitment to architecture’s capacity to improve people’s lives was at the center of his purpose-driven approach to design and teaching.
Anselmo was born in 1968 to Elisa (Luisa) Giampaolo and Biagio Canfora in Chicago, IL. He spent his childhood living between Chicago and Rutigliano (Bari), Italy. A first-generation college student, Anselmo studied architecture at the University of Illinois as an undergraduate student, followed by receiving a Master of Architecture degree with high distinction from the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning in 1996. Upon graduation, he was a recipient of the Alpha Rho Chi Medal, awarded to a graduating student who shows ability and promise for leadership and service.
Throughout his career, Anselmo not only realized, but excelled, in both. Following his graduate studies, he began his early teaching career at the University of Michigan where he served as a lecturer for seven years, and twice received the Donna M. Salzer Award for Teaching Excellence. It was during his time in Ann Arbor that Anselmo met his wife, Rebecca.
In 2004, together Rebecca and Anselmo moved to Charlottesville where he joined the faculty at the University of Virginia School of Architecture as an assistant professor. Teaching beginning architecture students, Anselmo inspired young designers through advocating for the importance of fabrication as an effective component of embodied learning. Integrating abstract processes of conceptualization, his students gained life-changing experiences working collaboratively with communities they were designing for to realize projects through tangible acts of making.
The impact of his pedagogical approach became even more apparent when in 2007, Anselmo founded Initiative reCOVER, a research project and design-build program, established to assist underserved populations through partnerships with humanitarian, community-based organizations, professional firms, and manufacturers.
One year after its founding, Anselmo and his undergraduate students at UVA designed The Gita School, a ten-room schoolhouse, which broke ground in September of 2008, and also initiated a multi-year partnership with the Indianapolis-based nonprofit Building Tomorrow. The relationship with Building Tomorrow launched subsequent Initiative reCOVER projects over the next decade—all interdisciplinary, community-driven projects that were tied to the studio curriculum at the School of Architecture. In spring 2023, Anselmo was appointed as Director of the School’s Center for Design. Aligned with Anselmo’s lifelong work in bringing together transdisciplinary teams of researchers to address how design research can make a positive public impact, in this role—cut far too short—he passionately shared his past experiences and successes with others.
Bringing people together was Anselmo’s forte, especially around a dinner table. If Anselmo cooked for you, he loved you and like many things, he was exceptional in the kitchen. Food was his love language and a means to share and exchange family heritage and tradition through recipes and techniques. Planning, procuring, and creating a dinner while obsessing over the details and bringing together good friends who would enjoy the company of wild laughter (often at his expense) made his heart swell. To make Anselmo laugh hard wasn’t easy but when you did, it was infectious. In this way and in so many other examples, he encouraged collaboration and capacity in others and uplifted the lives of those who knew him, a quality that was simply part of his endlessly generous and empathic spirit.
Anselmo’s greatest project realization for which he beamed unapologetic pride came in 2018 with the arrival of his son Calvino; the project he loved most out of any and the one that could make him laugh effortlessly.
We will miss that big heart, smile, and wide eyes that we knew as a son, brother, husband, uncle, father, friend, & colleague.
Anselmo is survived by his wife, Rebecca, and their son, Calvino; his father Biagio (Carmela) of Conversano, Italy, his sister Maria Carmela of Arlington, VA and his nephews, niece and family abroad. He is predeceased by his mother, Elisa (Luisa) Giampaolo. Donations can be made in his honor to the organization Anselmo held close to his heart,
BuildingTomorrow: buildingtomorrow.org
