1 in 6 by 2030 · Work or Retire?
Dedicating Myself to What I Love
Stefania Biondi · Querétaro, Mexico · 2024
By 2030, one in six people in the world will be over the age of sixty. 1 in 6 by 2030 is a global documentary project that looks at what that shift means through individual lives, and at the choices that come with growing older. Its Work or Retire? chapter follows people who have reached retirement age and kept working — by necessity, or by choice.
Stefania Biondi was born in L'Aquila, Italy, in 1956. An architect, academic and lifelong activist, she has lived in Mexico since 1993. She formally retired in 2017, and has kept teaching ever since — an adjunct professor guiding master's and doctoral students, a member of her neighbourhood committee, still shaping the city she chose. For Stefania, retirement was never a stopping point but a change of terms.
Asked why she keeps working, her answer is simple: she is dedicating herself to what she loves. She lives by a phrase she likes to invert from the old proverb — never leave for today what you can put off until tomorrow — not as idleness, but as permission to move through life at her own pace, on her own terms.
This story was originally published by 1 in 6 by 2030.
Portrait of Stefania Biondi in her personal studio at her home in El Porvenir, Querétaro. December 18, 2024.
The studio is where much of her work still happens. Retirement moved her working life home, but did not end it.
Stefania Biondi walks through the halls of the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro on December 4, 2024. She has worked as an adjunct professor here since 2017, the year she retired.
The date is not a coincidence. The end of her formal career and the start of this teaching work are the same year — retirement as a change of terms, not a departure.
Stefania speaks with one of her students while reviewing final doctoral projects at the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro on December 4, 2024.
Much of her teaching is one to one, spent guiding students through the last and hardest stretch of their research.
Stefania's personal belongings: reading glasses, pens and markers for editing, and an Amarelli tin she always carries with her. Querétaro, Mexico. December 4, 2024.
Small objects like these move with her through the working day — the ordinary tools of someone who still edits, still reads, still works.
Stefania prepares for the presentations of her master's students in architecture at the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro. December 4, 2024.
Architecture was her own discipline, and it remains the ground she works from — now passed on to the students who follow her.
Stefania meets with municipal officers of Querétaro, accompanied by a colleague from the El Porvenir neighbourhood committee, on December 6, 2024. The committee has won real gains in local safety, including the closure of a petrol station built without the required permits.
Her activism did not retire when she did. The same commitment that shaped her career now works at the scale of her own neighbourhood.
Stefania plays by the pool with a friend's child during a colleague's birthday party in downtown Querétaro, Mexico, on December 7, 2024.
The life she has built in Querétaro is not only work. It is friendships, gatherings, and the ease of belonging to a place she chose.
Stefania chats with friends during a birthday party in downtown Querétaro. December 7, 2024.
Among friends, the professor and the activist give way to someone simply at home in her own life.
Stefania at the balcony of her bedroom, one of her favourite spots in the house, on December 18, 2024.
As she spends more time at home, the corners of the house she loves most have taken on a new weight in her days.
Portrait of Stefania beside her personal library, one of her favourite places in the house along with the balcony of her bedroom. Querétaro, Mexico. December 18, 2024.
The library holds a lifetime of reading — the architecture, the politics, the years of study that still shape how she thinks.
The garden at Stefania and Máximo's home in Querétaro, Mexico. This space has become especially meaningful to her as she now spends more time at home. December 18, 2024.
The garden is a quiet measure of the change retirement brought — more hours at home, and more attention for the places within it.
Stefania looks through the family album at her home in Querétaro on December 18, 2024. Originally from Italy, she has lived in Mexico since 1993, while her family remains in Italy.
The album holds the distance she has lived with for three decades — a life built in Mexico, a family still across the ocean.
Stefania holds a portrait of herself as a child on December 18, 2024. She recalls the photo was taken one Sunday before mass in her hometown of L'Aquila, Italy.
The photograph reaches back across an ocean and a lifetime — a Sunday in the Italian town where she was born, held now in a house in Mexico.
Stefania talks with her husband Máximo while looking at family photos in the living room of their home in Querétaro, on December 18, 2024. Their dog Cleo is with them.
She and Máximo have been together since 1986. The afternoons over old photographs are part of the life they have shared across two countries.
A clipping from a Nicaraguan newspaper showing Stefania and Máximo during the commemorative march of El Repliegue in 1987. The caption notes the Italian couple's surprise at the joy and enthusiasm of the people who took part.
Since her youth, Stefania has been an activist for political and social causes. The clipping is a trace of a life lived, from early on, in the middle of things.
Stefania and Máximo in Máximo's studio at their home in El Porvenir, Querétaro, on December 18, 2024. Together since 1986, they share a son, Daniele.
Two studios under one roof, two lives still at work. For Stefania, this is what retirement looks like: not an ending, but the freedom to keep doing what she loves.