Renato Giovanelli was a civil engineer and additionally studied architecture in Roma. He graduated in 1946 and worked as an assistant professor at the University of La Sapienza, where he came into contact with the Italian rationalists. In 1948, he went to Colombia as a project engineer for a bridge construction company. Eight years later he founded an office in Cali together with two Colombian architects. There, they designed mansions and office complexes as well as the Cali Country Club. The submitted Project for “Stadium for 50,000 Spectators, Naples” may have been a preliminary study of the later Stadio San Paolo in Naples, whose construction had become necessary after the damages of the World War II.
Italy