MARIO CRECENTE

Mario Crecente is PhD Architect, consultant in Tourism and Heritage and expert in Thermalism.

His first experience as an architect, in the public sector, was at the service of the Xunta de Galicia, in the areas of Heritage, Urban Planning and Tourism between 1985 and 2000. In 2000 he founded Mario Crecente y Asociados Consultores SLP, a company that works on the relationship between Heritage and Tourism from an architectural perspective, with special interest in Spa Heritage and Thermal Tourism.

Furthermore, he is president of the scientific committee of the European Historic Thermal Towns Association (EHTTA); he has participated as a speaker in Conferences and Seminars on Tourism, Thermalism and Heritage in various countries; and he is a professor of Tourism Management of Heritage and Current Industrial Design at the University of A Coruña.

Paul trained as an architect in London and specialised in historic building projects.

He has been Director of Tourism in Bristol, Norwich and Bath. In 1998 he established a project team to regenerate the historic spa in Bath, as Project Director he was responsible for the project concept, financing, design team, operational issues and project realisation.

Since 2003 Paul has worked as a consultant specialising in historic spas, World Heritage and sustainable tourism projects. He is a member of ICOMOS UK.

He was a founding member of the European Historic Thermal Towns Association.

In 2013 he was appointed Secretary General of the ‘Great Spa Towns of Europe UNESCO project’, the Great Spa Towns of Europe were inscribed on the World Heritage List in July 2021.

Paul is a trustee of the Cleveland Pools Trust in Bath and of the Oxford Literary Festival.

Alane has 24 years experience preserving Saratoga Springs as a unique natural and historic destination. 

As Director of the Open Space Project, and of Saratoga P.L.A.N., a community planning organization and land trust, she has led successful government funding referenda for land protection, and championed city planning to balance preservation and development. 

Alane joined NYS Parks in 2008 to lead the revitalization and transformation of State Parks and Historic Sites, including Saratoga Spa State Park, a National Historic Landmark. She has created comprehensive plans for parks and managed their implementation through new construction, revitalization of historic structures, and collaborations with public/private partners. Alane has an Art History degree from Hamilton College and a master‘s in Environmental Management and Policy from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Dana Salama is an Egyptian/Moroccan architect, curator, and researcher. She is currently an associate at Aziza Chaouni Projects (www.azizachaouniprojects.com), a design practice using collaborative design tools to develop conservation management plans for cultural heritage sites in the global south, as well as socially sustainable ecotourism, with a particular focus on exploring and repairing relationships to land and territory in postcolonial contexts. Since 2019 Dana has been working with architect Aziza Chaouni on conservation management and cultural activations at Sidi Harazem, a Modern thermal bath station outside of Fez, Morocco that was designed by J.F. Zevaco in the late 60s. She also manages projects for international organizations such as the Getty Conservation Institute, World Monuments Fund, and others. She has worked on participatory design projects and conservation management plans for heritage sites in North and West Africa: the Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Complex (Fez, Morocco), Centre international du commerce extérieur (Dakar, Senegal), Old Fourah Bay College (Freetown, Sierra Leone), as well as Ontario Place (Toronto, Canada). Through her work at ACP she has also received two Holcim Sustainability Awards (2020) for Joudour Sahara, a sustainable cultural campus in Morocco’s arid Draa Valley.

Dana graduated with honours from the Master of Architecture Program at the University of British Columbia, where she received the Abraham Rogatnick Book Prize and was nominated for a Canadian Architect Student Award of Excellence. She often serves as a speaker and guest critic at the University of Toronto, Carleton University, University of Waterloo, University of British Columbia, and Ryerson University. Dana’s projects and writings have appeared in Dezeen, ArchDaily, The Guardian, Azure Magazine, Wallpaper Magazine, Canadian Architect, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and others.

Feng Jian holds a Bachelor degree in Cultural Relics Conservation and a Master degree in Archeology and Museum of Northwest University Xi’an.

From 1997 to 2005 Feng Jian has worked at the conservation office of the Xi’an Institute of Archaeology and cultural relics conservation

His impressive list of conservation projects and objects starts in the years 1998 to 2000 with the reparation of more than eighty famille-rose porcelains, co-excavation of six tombs, and the reparation of more than three hundreds relics.

Since 2012 Feng Jian was involved in the coordination work of “Xi’an municipal Silk Roads world heritage nomination leader group office” followed by the four Silk Roads Network’s working group meetings of the Chang’an – Tian-shan corridor.

In addition to his numerous conservation projects Feng Jian has a broad experience in the organisation of archive management trainings and advising of conservation and exhibition projects as well as data management. To be mentioned is his engagement in the development of the Silk roads Archive and Information Management System in 2011 and one year later the development of the four archives management system.

Feng Jian has been engaged in several World Heritage Meetings as well as international conservation meetings around the world.

He has been the second author of the World Heritage Nomination in 2007 and has published several articles and books. His latest publications being “Pigment Analysis of Han dynasty mural tomb in Xi’an University of Technology Qujiang campus” (in collaboration) in 2011, “Field conservation technology studies of West Han dynasty mural tomb in Xi’an university of Technology” (in collaboration).

Oana Chirilă is 28 years old, is an architect and a PhD student in Political Science at the West University of Timișoara. She worked as a trainee architect in the prestigious Modus Architects studio in Italy, and then worked as a project manager in Mulberry Development Timișoara. In 2021, for 6 months, she was an adviser in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Romania.

At only 23 years old, Oana initiated one of the most important civic projects with national impact in the cultural heritage preservation sector: HerculaneProject. She coordinated projects of the association such as the summer school, cultural and marketing projects, as well as the project to save and preserve the Neptune Baths, a historical monument of national interest.

In the winter of 2019, Oana won the Heritage Guardian Award, at the 2019 Career Gala, by popular vote and in 2021 was nominated as one of the ten finalists of the program Ten Outstanding Young Persons Romania, and the coordinated projects won a series of awards at regional and national level.

Mihai Sora is a 35 years old IT Specialist, with a Master’s degree in Economics and Business Administration at the University of Craiova, Romania. In the last decade he contributed as a QA Engineer and Operations Manager to projects and software products for entities like eMAG, McDonalds, KPMG, PwC and The European Payments Initiative. From 2019 to 2021, Mihai also helped several promising start-ups as an Angel Investor.
6 months ago, Mihai joined one of the most important civic projects with national impact in the cultural heritage preservation sector: HerculaneProject. He handles the digital/online part of fundraising, creating donation funnels and integrating new payment methods(like Stripe) in order for the established and new project supporters to have a rapid financial contribution to any initiative.