Founder & Story
From Personal Experience to a Lasting Design Institution
Landmarks began with the experience of its founder, Bardia Azizi, but it was never intended to remain dependent on one person. It is being built around a larger idea: valuable knowledge should become principles, shared methods, and a culture that can continue to learn, create, and contribute over time.
~ 20 Years
Practical experience
through process
Italy
Design education and cultural perspective
International
work across multiple project types and markets
System-built
Founder knowledge translated into shared methods
A Journey Shaped by Practice, Education and Art
My approach to architecture was not formed through one school, one country or one style. It developed through
practical responsibility, large-scale projects, academic study in Italy, artistic collaboration and the continuing
challenge of turning personal knowledge into a system a team can share.
Each stage added something different. Process taught me how space must work. Italy expanded the way I think
about design and culture. Alfio Mongelli showed me how architecture can become personal, sculptural and
expressive. Landmarks became the place where I began bringing these lessons together.
The Foundation: Process
My professional foundation was formed at Process International Group, our family design and construction company, where I worked alongside my father, Dr. Mahmoud Reza Azizi Torshizi, for nearly twenty years.
With a PhD in Architecture and Structural Design, more than fifty years of experience and over 500 projects across different countries, my father gave me an education that went far beyond theory. I learned through real projects and real responsibilities, eventually becoming chief architect and leading several design teams.
During our years in Dubai, my role expanded beyond design. At its largest, the company grew to around 400 people. This experience taught me the importance of leadership, coordination and systems, alongside precision in circulation, proportion, function and structural logic.
Above all, Process taught me to balance creativity with responsibility. A building can be expressive and original, but it still has to work for the people who use it. This principle remains at the foundation of my work today.
FOUNDER QUOTE
Beauty without spatial intelligence is not enough.
My father taught me to understand how a project works before deciding how it should appear.
Expanding My Perspective in Italy
Moving to Italy changed the way I understood architecture. Living and studying in Rome taught me to look beyond function and construction and to see architecture through culture, history, art and everyday life.
This perspective was also shaped by a broader international experience. I have lived in six countries and experienced more than thirty countries firsthand, observing how differently people live, use space, and relate to their surroundings.
Italy brought these experiences into sharper focus. It taught me that architecture can be technically responsible while also carrying culture, emotion, and identity.
From Sculpture to Architecture: Alfio Mongelli
Another defining influence in Italy was Alfio Mongelli, artist, architect, academic, and founder of RUFA, Rome University of Fine Arts, and one of Italy’s distinguished contemporary sculptors.
I had the privilege of first studying under him and later collaborating with him professionally across architecture, interior design, and art. Working together taught me to see space in a more sculptural and expressive way, where form, proportion and composition could carry emotion and identity without losing function. This experience also strengthened my belief in personalized design. Architecture should not begin with a predetermined style, but with the people, culture and story it is meant to represent.
ABOUT LANDMARKS
Why Landmarks
The name Landmarks reflects the ambition behind the studio. We want every project to develop a strong and distinct personality – not to imitate the project before it. At its best, each project should have the potential to become one of the defining works of its own city: memorable because it belongs deeply to its client, purpose and place.
Bardia Azizi | Co-founder
From Founder Knowledge to Shared Principles
Personal experience becomes fragile when it remains only inside one person. At Landmarks, I began translating what I had learned into shared discovery methods, design principles, review standards, workflows and a culture of documented learning.
My role is not to remain the centre of every project forever. My responsibility is to help build the principles, people and systems that allow thoughtful work to continue without requiring my constant presence.
Architecture can outlive its designer. A good institution should be able to do the same.
Landmarks is being developed as a founder-led but not founder-dependent company: personal in its work, systematic in its process and lasting in its ambition.
