News: designer and urbanist Dan Hill has been announced as the new managing director of Fabrica, the Benetton Group’s communication research centre in Treviso, Italy.

Above image, left to right: Paul Thompson, Alessandro Benetton and Dan Hill

A new advisory board is to be set up, headed by rector of the Royal College of Art Paul Thompson. Both appointments are part of a wider management shake-up that includes Benetton Group chairman Alessandro Benetton taking on the role of chairman at Fabrica.

“Fabrica intends to consolidate its role as an international cultural centre,” Alessandro Benetton said, “by increasingly affirming its vocation as a leader in social communications, combining art and industry through its original and innovative perspective based on interaction, a multi-disciplinary approach and an ever closer connection with the most highly advanced academic world."

Based in a complex near Treviso that was restored and designed by Tadao Ando, the Fabrica research centre was founded in 1994. It offers annual scholarships to young artists and designers to undertake cultural and social communications projects under the guidance of experts in design, visual communication, music, digital technology and publishing.

Dan Hill joins Fabrica from Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, and has previously worked as Arup’s foresight and innovation leader for the Australasian region. He led the design of the BBC's award-winning websites and worked at media brand Monocle, where he acted as web and broadcast director. He is an adjunct professor in the design, architecture and building faculty at University of Technology, Sydney.

Paul Thompson is the rector of the Royal College of Art in London and was director of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York from before that. He was director of the Design Museum in London from 1993-2001.

Photo is by Marco Pavan/FABRICA.