Zaha Hadid: Pedagogy as Practice

Nicholas Boyarsky
PhD, AA Dipl, BA(Hons), RIBA, ARB

Nicholas Boyarsky PhD, AA Dipl, BA(Hons), RIBA, ARB trained at the Architectural Association in London, graduating in 1988. He worked for Zaha Hadid on projects in Berlin and Hamburg, for Michael Hopkins on Bracken House, and for Stefano de Martino on Chiat Day’s London offices before establishing BMA with Nicola Murphy in 1994.

Nicholas has lectured and taught at many European, North American and Far Eastern schools of architecture and contributed to conferences, symposia and workshops. He has been a Visiting Professor in the Us, at Cornell, RISD and NJIT, at Bergen Architecture School in Norway, and at NCKU in Taiwan. He directed Syracuse University;s London architecture programme from 2007 to 2010. Nicholas tuagh a design studio at the Bartlett, London in the Masters of Urban Design course form 2010-2012. He is currently teaching a fifth year studio at Oxford Brookes with a collaborative project based in the post-socialist landscapes of the Balkans and the Baltics (the Baltikans) alongside Peter Lang, the Italian group Stalker, and schools of architecture in Stockholm and Sarajevo. Nicholas is a founding member of the Urban Flashes network. He recently completed his PhD ‘Serious Play — A Deltiology of Practice’ as a part of RMIT University’s invitational Practice BAsed Research (PRS) program. He is currently a Professor of Architecture, Industry Fellow at RMIT University where he teaches on the PRS PhD programmes in Ho Chi Minh City and Barcelona.

https://boyarskymurphy.com/bma/people/

Nigel Coates
Architect

Nigel Coates (Malvern, b.1949) has consistently challenged the meaning of architecture and the object. His mission is to bring equal parts of art and intelligence to architecture and design; whatever the space or the object, Coates will fill it with passion, irony and instinct. After training at the Architectural Association, soon Coates became an original design force, with many of his ideas drawn from the ‘confusion and excitement’ of urban life. His inventive narratives have translated into many buildings, interiors and exhibitions around the world, particularly in Japan and the UK. More experimental work has been shown in an art and design context, including Ecstacity at the Architecture Association (1992), Mixtacity at Tate Modern (2007), Hypnerotosphere at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale, and Picaresque at the Triennale Design Museum (2012). He is much in demand as a designer of lighting and furniture, collaborating with many Italian companies including Alessi, Ceramica Bardelli, Gebrüder Thonet Vienna, Fornasetti, Fratelli Boffi, Glamora, L’Abbate, Poltronova, Richard Ginori, Slamp, Terzani and Varaschin. Examples of his work are held in several museum collections including the V&A in London and FRAC in Orléans. His book ‘Guide to Ecstacity’ was published by Laurence King in 2003 and his latest, ‘Narrative Architecture’, was published by Wiley in 2012. He is also a leading light at the new London School of Architecture.

https://nigelcoates.com/

Markus Dochantschi
Architect

studioMDA was founded by Markus Dochantschi in New York City in 2002 with the mission of challenging the boundaries of design. Markus was trained in Germany, where he graduated in 1995 with a Masters of Architecture from Technische Universität Darmstadt.
Before starting studioMDA, Dochantschi ran the office of Zaha Hadid Architects for seven years and was Head Project Architect on the Rosenthal Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. He has taught an Advanced Studio at Yale University with Zaha Hadid, Stefan Behnisch and Gerald Hines (2003), and an Advanced Studio at Columbia University’s Graduate School for Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) from 2008 until now.
Dochantschi has also served as the director of the Global Cities Architecture Program (GCAP) at GSAPP. He has been a Guest Lecturer at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) and a guest critic at the AA London; Columbia University, NY; The Cooper Union, NY; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Princeton University, Princeton; the ETH Zurich, Switzerland; the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst Vienna, Austria.

https://studiomda.com/markus-dochantschi-bio

Kar Hwa Ho
Head of Interior Architecture Zaha Hadid Architects, Dip.Arch (Hons), M.Arch

Kar first worked with Zaha Hadid Architects in 1985 following his studies at the Architectural Association. After completing his studies in the UK and the United States, Kar worked on projects around the world with a focus on interior architecture and retail design before rejoining ZHA as Head of Interior Architecture in 2014. His residential interiors, in particular, have won numerous awards and been widely published.

Kar began his studies at the Architectural Association in London, where he obtained his diploma in architecture with honors in 1985. He subsequently studied at Harvward Uniersity’s Graduate School of Design, graduating in 1990, and qualified as an architect in New York in 1993.

Before rejoining ZHA in 2014, Kar spent eleven years with Kohn Pedersen Fox, where he led design teams responsible for the design conception, development and implementation of mixed use, commercial and retail projects in the United States, China, Singapore and London. He then spent eight years with Louis Vuitton Malletier, leading the design planning, development and implementation of Louis Vuitton retail stores in China and the Asia-Pacific region.

At ZHA, Kar has work on the teams for the Vitra Fire STation and the Monsoon Restaurant and now leads the practice’s interior architecture team, drawing on his expertise in retail, commercial and residential interior design to allow the practice to offer a complete design service from master planning through to architecture, interior architecture, and produce and furniture design.

Today, he leads ZHA’s interior architecture team, drawing upon his expertise in retail, commercial and residential design, to expand ZHA’s offering to a complete design service from master planning through to architecture, interior architecture, and product and furniture design.

Kar oversees the design of all ZHA interiors projects.

https://studiomda.com/markus-dochantschi-bio

Mariana Ibañez
Architect

Mariana Ibañez is an Argentinian architect involved in practice, academia, and research. She is Associate Professor of Architecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, and co-founder of Ibañez Kim. Before joining MIT, Mariana taught at Harvard University Graduate School of Design for eleven years as Assistant and Associate Professor. She is an external examiner for the Architectural Association, and is on the awards jury of the Boston Society of Architects, the MacDowell Colony, and the Rotch foundation.
As an academic and editor, Mariana’s research is in the disciplinary core of architecture and its growing periphery, with a focus on the relationship among technology, culture, and the environment. Her recent publications include Paradigms in Computing by ACTAR D, and Organization or Design, published by a + t.
Mariana has a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Buenos Aires, and a Master of Architecture and Urbanism from the Architectural Association in London where she received thesis honours. Upon completing her graduate studies, she worked at the Advanced Geometry Unit at ARUP before joining Zaha Hadid Architects where she was Project Architect for the London Aquatic Centre for the 2012 Olympic Games, among other projects.
Mariana has exhibited work at the MoMA New York, the MAXXI Museum in Rome, and The National Art Museum in Beijing, with projects for the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.

https://www.ibanezkim.com/about

Charles Jencks

Charles Jencks is a renowned cultural theorist, landscape designer, architectural historian, and co-founder of the Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres. His best-selling books include The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, Adhocism, The Architecture of the Jumping Universe and The Architecture of Hope (on Maggie’s Centres). His recent landscape work is summarised in The Universe in the Landscape. Scotland is home to several of his most exciting landscapes including The Garden of Cosmic Speculation and Jupiter Artland, outside Edinburgh. His continuing project The Crawick Multiverse, 2015, commissioned by the Duke of Buccleuch, culminates annually in a three day festival of performance art and public debates with the world leading cosmologists and scientists.

https://www.charlesjencks.com/

WDA is grateful to have included Charles before he passed away in October of 2019. His biography will remain as the 2017 version.

Greg Lynn

GREG LYNN was an innovator in redefining the medium of design with digital technology as well as pioneering the fabrication and manufacture of complex functional and ergonomic forms using CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) machinery. The buildings, projects, publications, teachings and writings associated with his office have been influential in the acceptance and use of advanced materials and technologies for design and fabrication. As design opportunities today extend across multiple scales and media, his studio Greg Lynn FORM continues to define the cutting edge of design in a variety of fields. His work is in the permanent collections of the most important design and architecture museums in the world including the CCA, SFMoMA, ICA Chicago and MoMA. Because of his early studies in philosophy and architecture he has been involved in combining the realities of design and construction with the speculative, theoretical and experimental potentials of writing and teaching. In addition to designing consumer products utilizing new materials and manufacturing technologies with companies like Vitra, Alessi, Nike and Swarovski he is also a co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of the Boston based intelligent lightweight mobility company Piaggio Fast Forward. In 2002, he left his position as the Professor of Spatial Conception and Exploration at the ETHZ (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) and became an Ordentlicher University Professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He is a Studio Professor at UCLA’s school of Architecture and Urban Design where he is currently spearheading the development of an experimental research robotics lab. He was the Davenport Visiting Professor at Yale University from 1999-2016.

Greg Lynn was born in 1964 in Ohio. He graduated from Miami University of Ohio with degrees in both architecture (Bachelor of Environmental Design) and philosophy (Bachelor of Philosophy) and later from Princeton University where he received a graduate degree in architecture (Master of Architecture). He received an Honorary Doctorate degree from the Academy of Fine Arts & Design in Bratislava. He received the American Academy of Arts & Letters Architecture Award in 2003. In 2001, Time Magazine named Greg Lynn one of 100 of the most innovative people in the world for the 21st century. In 2005, Forbes Magazine named him one of the ten most influential living architects. In 2008, he won the Golden Lion at the 11th International Venice Biennale of Architecture. In 2010, he was awarded a fellowship from United States Artists.

http://glform.com/bio-2/

Brian Ma Siy

After graduating with first class honours and the Donaldson medal from University College London, Brian was taught by Zaha Hadid at the Architectural Association and was awarded an honours diploma.
Brian joined Zaha Hadid’s practice in its early days when the team was small and led projects for Halkin Place (1984), Trafalgar Square Grand Buildings (1985) and Tokyo International Forum (1989). He became an Associate at Mittelman Caradoc-Hodgkins, responsible for building the Sky BSB headquarters, health clubs, warehouse conversions and residences. Returning to Zaha Hadid’s practice, he was Project Architect for the £50 million Cardiff Bay Opera House (1994), the 25,000 sqm home to Welsh National Opera, and Co-Project Architect for the 34,000 sqm Art and Media Centre in Düsseldorf (1992), and worked on the Victoria and Albert Museum Extension (1996).

In 1996, Brian set up his own practice to concentrate on designing and building for private clients.

http://www.masiy.com/profile.html

Wolf D. Prix

Wolf D. Prix, born in 1942 in Vienna, is co-founder, Design Principal and CEO of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU. He studied architecture at the Vienna University of Technology, the Architectural Association of London as well as at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles.
Amongst others, Wolf D. Prix is a member of the Österreichische Bundeskammer der Architekten und Ingenieurkonsulenten, the Bund Deutscher Architekten, Germany (BDA), the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Architectural Association Santa Clara, Cuba, as well as Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture (FAIA).
Wolf D. Prix received numerous awards including the Great Austrian State Award and the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art. He is a permanent member of the Austrian Art Senate and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts as well as chairman of the Curia for Art since autumn 2014.
Two Universities have conferred him the Doctorate Honoris Causa: The Universidad de Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2001) and the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest, Romania (2014). In 2015 he was awarded an Honorary Diploma of the Architectural Association of London.
Wolf D. Prix is counted among the originators of the deconstructivist architecture movement. COOP HIMMELB(L)AU had its international breakthrough with the invitation to the exhibition “Deconstructivist Architecture” at MoMA New York in 1988. Over the years Wolf D. Prix/ COOP HIMMELB(L)AU was awarded with numerous international architecture awards.

Hannes Schafelner
Associate Director Zaha Hadid Architects, Mag. Arch. ARB RIBA

Having studied architecture and design in Innsbruck, Milan at the Studio Zaha Hadid, University for Applied Arts, Vienna, Johannes joined Zaha Hadid Architects in 2006. He has worked as Lead Designer / Architect on several major projects, including design and detailing for the complex roof of the London 2012 Aquatic Center.

Johannes Studied architecture at the Technical University, Innsbruck (1998-2001), Politechnico di Milano (2001-2001) and the University for Applied Arts Vienna (2002-2006).

https://www.zaha-hadid.com/people/johannes-schafelner/

Patrik Schumacher

Dr.-Phil., Dipl.-Ing., Architect, RIBA, ARB; Partner at Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA); Co-director AA Design Research Lab (AADRL)

https://www.patrikschumacher.com/

Mascha Veech-Kosmatschof
Managing Partner and Principal Architect Veech x Veech

Mascha Veech-Kosmatschof is the Managing Partner and Principal Architect of Veech x Veech. She has a direct role in the design and execution of the studio’s projects, working closely with an international client list and a talented internal design team to create innovative solutions, pushing the boundaries of the design brief, for schemes at any scale.

Born in Moscow, Russia, into a family of avant-garde artists (Vadim Kosmatschof and Elena Koneff), Mascha spent her formative years in the capital, where she was strongly influenced by Moscow’s cultural scene. After emigrating to Austria in 1979, she studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna under Austrian architect Wilhelm Holzbauer and subsequently studied at the Architectural Association in London under Jan Kaplicky, Ron Herron and Peter Rice, before completing her diploma in London in 1991 under Zaha Hadid. In 1993, she and Stuart A. Veech founded Veech Media Architecture as a multi-disciplinary studio bringing together architecture, broadcast media and design disciplines. In 2014 the company was renamed Veech x Veech to better reflect the breadth of work undertaken by the practice.

Mascha is a registered member of the Austrian Chamber of Architects and Consulting Engineers in Vienna.

http://veechxveech.com/about/

Madelon Vriesendorp

MADELON VRIESENDORP, Hon FRIBA Hon AA Dip, was born in 1945 in Holland. In 1964 she studied in Amsterdam at the Rietveld Academy and later worked on the restoration of old frescoes and as a designer of stage costumes, books and jewellery. Five years later she enrolled at Central St. Martins School of Art in London. She exhibited her work at the Workshop and the Serpentine Gallery, among others.

In 1972 she moved to Ithaca and then New York with Rem Koolhaas. While in New York, Vriesendorp co-founded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture with Koolhaas, Elia and Zoe Zenghelis. Paintings she produced at the time were used for book and magazine covers, notably Flagrant Delit on the cover of Delirious New York in 1978 by Rem Koolhaas. They were exhibited at the New York Guggenheim and Max Protetch galleries, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Stedelijk in Amsterdam and Gallery Ma in Tokyo among others.

Her work has been acquired by collectors, public and private, including the CCA Montreal, and Frankfurt Architectural Museum, amongst others. The art projects and writings have been published widely amongst others in Build, Design Quarterly, Domus, Abitare, Casabella, Architecture Aujourd’hui, while working on costumes, built objects, paintings and short stories.

In 1976, Vriesendorp returned to London to work on numerous OMA competitions. With Teri Wehn-Damisch she drew the storyboard Flagrant Delit, an animation film for French Television, developed by Cartoon Farm, directed by Jean-Pierre Jacquet. The story of Liberty’s visit as a tourist in New York. The film was shown in Annecy Film Festival, French Television, V&A and MoMA etc. In 1977 they had a daughter and in 1980, a son. From the mid 1980s she taught art and design at a number of schools, including the Architectural Association and the Edinburgh School of Art.

The exhibition World of Madelon Vriesendorp first shown in January 2008 at the Architectural Association, accompanied by the book of the same name, from AA Publications by its curator AACP director Shumon Basar and architect/theorist Stephan Trüby, and designed by Kasia Korczak. It went on to Aedes Berlin in March and the Venice Architectural Biennale in September that year. Basel opened in January 2009 at the Swiss Architectural Museum. She also had an installation at the Art Biennale in Venice and the Architecture Bienalle in Rotterdam that same year.

She worked together with Kees Christaanse on a chess set made in ETHZ for the Rotterdam Biennale in 2009. Over the last ten years she has worked in collaboration with Charles Jencks, producing drawings and models to accompany many of his publications, and with her daughter, Charlie in Room for Thought in Lausanne’s Lucy Mackintosh Gallery in 2012, and on several books and art projects. She collaborated with Noemi Blager, Tapio Snellman and Assemble on Lina Bo Bardi: Together, which went on a worldwide tour from 2012-16, starting in London and ending up in Sao Paolo, funded by Arper. Again with Assemble, she worked on the Colombo Art Biennale in 2016.

Designed an installation for the Rotunda Project Contemplating the Void at the Guggenheim in 2009, the watercolour was sold for fundraising. Created an installation for the Maggie Centre, Installation in London designed by Richard Rogers in 2009. A group exhibition with Sylvia Libedinsky and Nick Wadley was shown in Centro Cultural Borges in Buenos Aires, Cortes y Recortes in 2010.

In 2011 the chess set was shown in Sanaa’s Rolex Learning Centre in Lausanne. She contributed to O interior esta no exterior, in the Casa de Vidro Exhibition in Sao Paolo 2013, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. She painted postcards for Freeze for Frieze for the Moncler fundraising show for RCA scholarships in 2016. An installation was included in the Istanbul Design Biennale in 2016, The Hand – The whole man in miniature, a mixed-media installation as part of her larger investigation of the human body.

Her work was included in the MoMA PSI exhibition Past Skin, ending in September 2017.

Alex Wall
Design Critic in Landscape Architecture, Harvard GSD

Alex Wall received his Diploma at the Architectural Association, London. Between 1982 and 1989 he worked at OMA in London and Rotterdam, after which he was an Associate Professor of Architecture at the GSFA, University of Pennsylvania. Between 1998 and 2013, he was Professor and Chair of International Urban Design at KIT, Germany, focusing on design and planning at the intersection of urbanization and climate change. Between 2015-2018, he was Professor of Practice at the UVA, where his research project “Resilient Settlement and Productive Aquatic Landscapes” focused on framing long term redevelopment strategies for Virginia’s coastal Communities. With Margarita Jover, he curated the symposium “Ecologies of Prosperity for the Living City” (2016).

His books include Cities of Childhood – the Italian Colonie in the 1930s (with Stefano de Martino), (1989), and Victor Gruen – From urban shop to new city (2005). Recent articles include “The Urban Surface: Shifting Fields for Curated Events,” in B. C. Ivers (Ed.) The Culture of Curated Landscapes, (2018), “Sprawl is Dead, Long Live the Low-Density City,” in Berger and Kotkin (Eds.) Infinite Suburbia (2017), and “The Future is Already Here: Micro-urbanisms & consumption” in Nieman and Ringel (Eds.) Retail Urbanism (2014), with Susan Nigra Snyder.

In 2006, he was part of the 1st prize winning team Bava, Behrens, Craig, Wall and Agence Ter, for the 2006 invited international competition Euregio 2008. Between 2009 and 2013, he was a partner of UMnet, Stuttgart, which co-authored part of the German Council of Sustainable Building criteria for a Sustainable Urban Quarter, and ran planning workshops on reintegrating light industry into the everyday city. Collaborating with `asp´- Stuttgart, they won a prototype energy efficient office building, Karlsruhe (1st Prize), an Olympic Complex and Sport College, Wenzhou, China (2nd Prize), and the urban center of the Tuzla Logistics City, Istanbul (1st prize).

https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/person/alex-wall/

Mark Wigley

Mark Wigley is Professor and Dean Emeritus at Columbia GSAPP. He served as Dean from 2004 to 2014. Wigley has written extensively on the theory and practice of architecture and is the author of Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire (1998); White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture (1995); and The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt (1993). He co-edited The Activist Drawing: Retracing Situationalist Architectures from Constant’s New Babylon to Beyond (2001).

In 2005 he co-founded Volume magazine with Rem Koolhaas and Ole Bouman as a collaborative project by Archis (Amsterdam), AMO (Rotterdam), and C-lab (Columbia University). Wigley curated the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at The Museum of Modern Art, and others at The Drawing Center, New York; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; and Witte de With Museum, Rotterdam.

Mark Wigley was awarded the Resident Fellowship, Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism (1989), International Committee of Architectural Critics (C.I.C.A.) Triennial Award for Architectural Criticism (1990) and a Graham Foundation Gran (1997). He received both his Bachelor of Architecture (1979) and his Ph.D. (1987) from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

https://www.arch.columbia.edu/faculty/33-mark-wigley

Philip Michael Wolfson

In the 21st century, architecture aspires to sculpture on a monumental scale and on a different level, experimental furniture design is at the forefront, approaching fine art with just that relative element of function.

Born 1958 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of a NASA engineer. He studied architecture at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York and at the Architectural Association, London, England, where he was discovered by Zaha Hadid. After completing his studies he spent the next ten years as head of design with her. In 1991 Wolfson established his own studio and has worked throughout Europe and the USA on residential interiors and functional art pieces shown at leading international art and design exhibitions, galleries, and public venues.

He has established his distinctive pathway, re-examining the forms and ideas of the early 20th century Modernist movements, particularly Constructivism and Futurism. His unique approach to design and art is informed by the dynamics of fracture and fragmentation – layering and manipulating his materials into fluid shapes and forms, where the dynamics of light, shadow and reflection are an integral part of the seduction of the work. They are elegant, graceful designs, easily resembling elongated black swan wings in repose; layered geological contortions, or the energetic movements of an impassioned orchestral conductor. The exquisite use of noble materials woods, glass, metals and stones, as well as new materials, such as carbon fiber, brings dynamic elegance and an individual contemporary feeling that enhances his unique approach. Works by Philip Michael Wolfson have been shown at, or are included in numerous international collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum (London. UK), the Foundation Cartier (Paris, FR), and the Price Tower Arts Center (Bartlesville, USA). His designs are on display at renowned galleries Contrasts, Shanghai; Franziska Kessler, Zurich; Sebastian + Barquet, New York, at high-profile design art fairs Art Basel, Design Miami, Salone Internazionale del Mobile, Milan, TEFAF, Maastricht and thru the auction houses, Christies and Phillips de Pury in London and New York.

http://www.wolfsondesign.com/index.html