Milagros Zingoni Phielipp

Associate Professor Milagros Zingoni joined the University of Tennessee as the Director of the School of Interior Architecture in January of 2021. Before this, she was an Associate Professor (with tenure) at Arizona State University where she started her academic career in 2007. During this tenure, she taught for nine years in Architecture and Urban Design, before joining the Interior Design Program in where she created and developed the Master in Interior Architecture. Zingoni is originally from Argentina, where she is a registered architect, and has additional study in habitat design and urban and environmental planning. Milagros’s experience as a designer, planner and educator allow her to move easily across scales: from the city to the scale of the body.

Her research includes developing pedagogical approaches that can enable design students to develop empathy and collaboration skills, expanding design-build studios in interior design and interior architecture and cross disciplinary design thinking. Zingoni leverages the resources of Public Research 1 land-grant universities to empower underserved communities through design as a means to develop pedagogical and experiential settings that address new ways of learning, emphasizing problem-solving skills and collaboration that create communities of learning. Her studios focus on community and commitment to public engagement through participatory design-build collaboration. Zingoni was recognized in 2019 by the Interior Design Educator’s Council (IDEC) with the National Teaching Excellence Award, by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Arizona Chapter with the honor of 2019 Educators of the Year Award, by the annual DesignIntelligence rankings as one of the top twelve most admired educators in the country and by Arizona State University 2020 Outstanding Faculty Mentor Awards. Zingoni is a strong advocate for community causes, serving on multiple non-profit and civic boards.