Veronica Mainetti is an Italian entrepreneur, environmental activist, sustainable developer and visual artist. Founder/CEO of RYSIT. Owner of The Sorgente Group.
Upon graduation at European Institute of Design in Rome, Mainetti moved to New York in 2003, [1] attending the Parsons Institute of Design. In the same year she took the helm at The Sorgente Group, overseeing real estate investment operations in the US. She took part in the acquisition of a significant stake in the Chrysler Building—reselling in 2008—and for the acquisition of the majority stake in the Flatiron Building in New York. [2]
Conservation and redevelopment of historic buildings in the United States have been Mainetti's main focus since 2003, including the current ongoing restoration of New York City's Flatiron Building. Carried out through research conducted by Veronica Mainetti, all of these projects have been dedicated to exemplifying sustainable and environmentally responsible development practices.
2012 saw the completion of two redeveloped buildings in New York City. These loft conversions, known as Giglio on Greene in Greene Street, SoHo became the first under a new Giglio certificate in sustainable development practice created by Mainetti as President of The Sorgente Group.
She participated in increasing the Group's assets under management with the acquisition of the Fine Arts Building in Los Angeles in 2012 (resold in 2016) and the Clock Tower Building in Santa Monica in 2013.
In 2017, The Sorgente Group's 60 White Street opened in Tribeca, [3] being the first sustainable restoration of an historical building of its kind in New York City. During the building's construction in 2015, a documentary film titled Giglio on White began production as well, helmed by Mainetti and filmmaker Daniel Fickle to chronicle the story of 60 White's redevelopment and the struggles along the way to implement modern sustainability practices in code with the historically landmarked building's restoration. Giglio on White is currently in post-production, with no release date set.
She received the America Award of the Italy-USA Foundation in 2017.
Named by the New York Post as one of the 20 most influential people in New York real estate, and ranked 3 years in a row in the Power 100.
Mainetti is also a visual artist and a practicing rock climber using ethical minded art and wellness activities in continuation of her background as a sustainable developer.
Mainetti's personal work outside the development world continues in the expression of the dualities of nature & humanity, drawing heavily from her commitment to improving the way we live through environmental awareness, activism and sustainable practice. Her on-going conceptual photography series often explore common themes of rebirth in the human condition, likening the human body to Mother Earth and vice versa.
In Spring 2018, an interactive photo/video exhibit titled The Rebirth [4] showed at the Flatiron Building, in the exclusive Prow Art Space. On display 24 hours a day through the front windows of the building, The Rebirth [5] looped continuously for the duration of the exhibit, witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people on a weekly basis.
For Earth Day 2019, RYSIT projected life-sized imagery over the facade of the Flatiron Building at night, featuring motion graphics of oceans waves climbing the height of the building to represent where global sea level would affect New York City if the ice sheets of Greenland/Antarctica were to melt as a result of global warming. Mainetti incorporated climbing into the event, filming a short video of herself using safety gear to scale the entire height of the building. As originally conceptualized, climbing the outside of the Flatiron was not an option for this event, so she and her crew took the cameras inside, ascending 280 ft upward in the stairwell, finishing the symbolic final 5 ft outside the building, previewing her climb for the general public through video feeds in the window-front gallery of the building. With Mainetti at the top of the building about 220 ft of projected ocean waves, the event was meant to show real-time visuals of how global sea level could rise as much as 220 ft, nearly the full height of the Flatiron, which is 285 feet respectively.
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least 100 meters (330 ft) or 150 meters (490 ft) in height, though there is no universally accepted definition, other than being very tall high-rise buildings. Historically, the term first referred to buildings with between 10 and 20 stories when these types of buildings began to be constructed in the 1880s. Skyscrapers may host offices, hotels, residential spaces, and retail spaces.
The School of Visual Arts New York City is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.
The Flatiron Building, originally the Fuller Building, is a triangular 22-story, 285-foot-tall (86.9 m) steel-framed landmarked building at 175 Fifth Avenue in the eponymous Flatiron District neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by Daniel Burnham and Frederick P. Dinkelberg, and known in its early days as "Burnham's Folly", it was completed in 1902 and originally included 20 floors. The building sits on a triangular block formed by Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and East 22nd Street—where the building's 87-foot (27 m) back end is located—with East 23rd Street grazing the triangle's northern (uptown) peak. The name "Flatiron" derives from its triangular shape, which recalls that of a cast-iron clothes iron.
The Flatiron District is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, named after the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street, Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Generally, the Flatiron District is bounded by 14th Street, Union Square and Greenwich Village to the south; the Avenue of the Americas and Chelsea to the west; 23rd Street and Madison Square to the north; and Park Avenue South and Gramercy Park to the east.
Jay DeFeo was a visual artist who became celebrated in the 1950s as part of the spirited community of Beat artists, musicians, and poets in San Francisco. Best known for her monumental work The Rose, DeFeo produced courageously experimental works throughout her career, exhibiting what art critic Kenneth Baker called “fearlessness.”
The architecture of Atlanta is marked by a confluence of classical, modernist, post-modernist, and contemporary architectural styles. Due to the Battle of Atlanta and the subsequent fire in 1864, the city's architecture retains almost no traces of its Antebellum past. Instead, Atlanta's status as a largely post-modern American city is reflected in its architecture, as the city has often been the earliest, if not the first, to showcase new architectural concepts. However, Atlanta's embrace of modernism has translated into an ambivalence toward architectural preservation, resulting in the destruction of architectural masterpieces, including the Commercial-style Equitable Building, the Beaux-Arts style Terminal Station, and the Classical Carnegie Library. The city's cultural icon, the Neo-Moorish Fox Theatre, would have met the same fate had it not been for a grassroots effort to save it in the mid-1970s.
The Fox Theatre is a performing arts center located at 2211 Woodward Avenue in Downtown Detroit, Michigan, near the Grand Circus Park Historic District. Opened in 1928 as a flagship movie palace in the Fox Theatres chain, it was at over 5,000 seats the largest theater in the city. Designed by theater architect C. Howard Crane, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
Madison Square is a public square formed by the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The square was named for Founding Father James Madison, fourth President of the United States. The focus of the square is Madison Square Park, a 6.2-acre (2.5-hectare) public park, which is bounded on the east by Madison Avenue ; on the south by 23rd Street; on the north by 26th Street; and on the west by Fifth Avenue and Broadway as they cross.
60 Wall Street is a 55-story, 745-foot-tall (227 m) skyscraper on Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City, United States. The tower was designed by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo of Roche-Dinkeloo and originally built for J.P. Morgan & Co. The building's design was intended to fit its surroundings with a postmodern, Greek Revival, and neoclassical look. As of 2021, 60 Wall Street is mostly owned by GIC Singapore, with Paramount Group as minority owner.
The Queen Victoria Building is a heritage-listed late-nineteenth-century building located at 429–481 George Street in the Sydney central business district, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Designed by the architect George McRae, the Romanesque Revival building was constructed between 1893 and 1898 and is 30 metres (98 ft) wide by 190 metres (620 ft) long. The domes were built by Ritchie Brothers, a steel and metal company that also built trains, trams and farm equipment. The building fills a city block bounded by George, Market, York, and Druitt Streets. Designed as a marketplace, it was used for a variety of other purposes, underwent remodelling, and suffered decay until its restoration and return to its original use in the late twentieth century. The property is owned by the City of Sydney and was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 5 March 2010.
Hagstrom Map, based in Maspeth, Queens, was the best-selling brand of road maps in the New York City metropolitan area from the mid-20th to early 21st century. The New York Times in 2002 described Hagstrom's Five Borough Atlas as New York City's "map of record" for the previous 60 years.
Will Ryman is an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures and public art projects.
Thor Equities is a real estate development, leasing and management firm, with headquarters in New York City, London and Mexico City. Thor Equities owns property in the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia, India and Latin America, including London's historic Burlington Arcade and the Palmer House Hilton. In New York City, Thor owns retail, office and residential properties on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue as well as in SoHo, Flatiron, the Meatpacking District, and Brooklyn including Coney Island. Thor also has investments in major U.S. cities including San Francisco's Union Square; Georgetown in Washington, D.C.; Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood; Collins Avenue; Lincoln Road; Wynwood and the Design District in Miami. Thor offers investment vehicles for institutional investors through its Thor Urban Property Funds. Thor Equities also has several subsidiary companies including retail advisory and tenant representation firm Thor Retail Advisors.
Ariane de Rothschild is a Salvadorean-French banker, CEO of Edmond de Rothschild Group since March 2023. She is the first woman to run a Rothschild-branded financial institution.
The National Newark Building is a neo-classical office skyscraper in Newark, New Jersey. It has been the tallest building in Newark since 1931 and was tallest in New Jersey until 1989. At thirty-five stories, it has a height of 466 ft (142 m). It is located in the heart of Downtown Newark at 744 Broad Street, just north of Four Corners.
The Pullman Flatiron Building in downtown Pullman, Washington, in Whitman County, also known as Flatiron Building, was constructed in 1904-05. It faces Main Street and is located between Grand Avenue and the High Street plaza. It was designed by William Swain, a prolific local architect who is considered to be Pullman's first. The two-story flatiron was built as an office building in a triangular shape, on what's stated to be the only triangular lot in the city, conforming to the angle between two grids of streets. Multiple businesses have occupied the building over its lifetime, including banks, insurance companies, and a dentist.
Sorgente Group Italy and Sorgente Group of America (US) are part of Sorgente Group Alternative Investment (US) in which the major shareholder is Valter Mainetti. The operative real estate companies, financial and real estate services companies are 94 and are located in Italy, France, Switzerland, Great Britain, Luxembourg, USA and Brazil, with field offices in Rome, New York and Luxembourg. The total real estate assets owned, managed and administrated by the funds and the underlying companies amounts to €5 billion at January 2019. 30% of the 'Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno' was acquired through the Group, the percentage has fallen at 2% in 29.06.2018. By means of a subsidiary called 'Musa Comunicazione', the Group also holds 100% shares of the newspaper ‘Il Foglio Quotidiano’ and 80% shares of ‘Tempi’.
Brickell Flatiron is a residential skyscraper in the Brickell district of Miami, Florida. Brickell Flatiron is 736 feet (224 m) tall, 64 stories, and has 527-units. The luxury condominium is named "flatiron" due to the triangular lot it is built on, similar to the Flatiron Building in New York City. The 736-foot-high tower is currently the tallest condominium south of New York City.
Valter Mainetti is an Italian entrepreneur, publisher and business manager, major shareholder of Sorgente Group, president of Società Italiana per Condotte d'Acqua and of Musa Comunicazione.
Gwyneth Leech is an American artist. She is best known for her use of paper coffee cups as a canvas for her artistic pieces and for her paintings of high-rise construction projects.