The speaker is Romaldo Giurgola an Italian-American-Australian architect, academic, professor, and author. Giurgola was born in Rome in 1920. After service in the Italian armed forces during World War II, he was educated at the Sapienza University of Rome. He received a master’s degree in architecture from Columbia University, and has been a partner in Philadelphia firm Mitchell/Giurgola Architects since 1958. He has been a professor at Cornell and at the University of Pennsylvania, then at Columbia, before becoming chair of the Columbia architectural department in 1966. He is presently Ware Professor Emeritus of Architecture at Columbia. He was awarded the AIA Gold Medal in 1982.
In Philadelphia, Giurgola had formed a relationship with Louis Kahn, who held similar views. In April 1961 the architectural critic Jan Rowan grouped Giurgola, Kahn, Robert Venturi, George Qualls, Robert Geddes and others into “The Philadelphia School”. Giurgola has published several books on Kahn’s work and philosophy.
He was invited to join the panel of judges for the 1980 international competition for the landmark Australian Parliament House in Canberra. Instead, he preferred to be an entrant himself. [1] After winning the competition, Giurgola moved to Australia and practises there. He later adopted Australian citizenship.

Extract from Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romaldo_Giurgola