Alejandro Zaera

Alejandro Zaera-Polo (born Madrid, 1963) is an accomplished contemporary architect and co-founder of London-based Foreign Office Architects. His work has consistently merged the practice of architecture with theoretical practice, providing a strong intellectual rigour to the discourse on architecture through a sharp capacity to identify social and political trends and creatively extrapolate them.

He trained at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, graduating with Honors, and went on to do a Master in Architecture (MARCH II) at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, USA, where he graduated with Distinction. He collaborated with Rem Koolhaas at OMA in Rotterdam between 1991 and 1993, prior to establishing Foreign Office Architects together with Farshid Moussavi in 1993.

Alejandro Zaera-Polo has also had an extensive involvement in education at an international level since 1993. He currently occupies the Berlage Chair at the Technical University in Delft [http://www.berlage-institute.nl/persons/alejandro_zaera_polo] , the Netherlands, and was Dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam from 2000-2005, resetting the institution’s academic compass through pedagogy and public events towards the creation of new instruments of architecture and urban design conceived through practice in globalised conditions. In tandem with holding the Delft Chair he is a member of the Institute’s current Research Board (with Ben van Berkel, Winy Maas, Robert E. Somol and Elia Zenghelis). He has been Visiting Professor at Columbia GSAPP, Princeton SOA, UCLA School of Architecture, and he led a Diploma Unit for eight years at the Architectural Association in London with Farshid Moussavi.

Alejandro Zaera-Polo co-founded the London-based firm, Foreign Office Architects (FOA), which is recognized as one of the most creative design firms in the world, deftly integrating architecture, urban design and landscape architecture in their projects. Under his theoretical stewardship, FOA has produced critically acclaimed and award winning projects for the public and private sector on an international scale.

Partial bibliography

Beyond the theoretical work in El Croquis, his texts have been published in many professional publications such as Quaderns, A+U, Arch+, Log, Volume and Harvard Design Magazine, and in books including The Endless City (ed. Richard Burdett and Deyan Sudjic, published by Phaidon, 2008), Some of his writings can also be found within FOA’s monographs to date.

*‘A Scientific Autobiography, 1982-2004: Madrid, Harvard, OMA, the AA, Yokohama, the Globe’, in The New Architectural Pragmatism, (ed. William S. Saunders, with essays by Stan Allen, K. Michael Hays, Kenneth Frampton, Roemer van Toorn et al), a Harvard Design Magazine Reader, 5, 2007, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007

*‘30 St Mary’s Axe: Form isn’t Facile’, Log, #4, Winter 2005

*‘The Hokusai Wave’, Volume, #3, September 2005

*Interview with Peter Macapia, Log, #3, Fall 2004

External links

*FOA’s official website: [http://www.f-o-a.net/]

* [http://www.designmuseum.org/designinbritain/foreign-office-architects Design Museum Profile]

*Archinect: discussion on Iconography, or the problem of representation, following the publication of Alejandro Zaera Polo’s text ‘The Hokusai Wave’ in Volume #3, September 2005 [http://www.archinect.com/forum/threads.php?id=33493_0_42_0_C]

*Berlage Institute: [http://www.berlage-institute.nl/]

*El Croquis [http://www.elcroquis.es/Home.aspx?lang=en]

*El Pais: interviews with and features about Alejandro Zaera Polo, 2002-2006 [http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:5LwFL2X8RpMJ:www.elpais.com/todo-sobre/persona/Zaera/Alejandro/3830/+Alejandro+Zaera+Polo+El+Pais&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=uk]

*The Endless City (eds.Richard Burdett and Deyan Sudjic), Phaidon, 2007 [http://www.phaidon.com/endlesscity/]

*Harvard Design Magazine Reader, 5: The New Architectural Pragmatism [http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/S/saunders_new.html]

*The Urban Age [http://www.urban-age.net/]

*Volume: interview with Alejandro Zaera Polo by Jeffrey Inaba, Ambition issue, #3, March 2007 [http://www.archis.org/email/newsletter_Volume13oct07.html]

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