Key Building:
Yokohama International Port Terminal, Japan
1995 - architecture competition winners
FOA moved temporarily to Yokohama in 1999
Yokohama Ferry Terminal was only completed in 2002
Yokohama Ferry Terminal from Foreign Office Architects via RIAS in 2004
FOA founded 1993 by Alejandro Zaera Polo & Farshid Moussavi; they met at
Harvard University, USA. Zaera Polo and Moussavi also married in 1993.
Foreign Office Architects - Buildings (alphabetical):
Aerospace Valley project, nr Toulouse, France
2008-
Montaudran Aerodrome redevelopment
Auditoria Park, Barcelona International Forum of Cultures, Spain
2004
Azadi Cineplex, Tehran, Iran
-
BBC Music Centre, White City, northwest London, England
2006
Competition win in 2004
Belgo restaurant, Ladbroke Grove, west London, UK
1998
Birmingham Library, central England
2008-
Shortlist of 7 practices announced Mar 2008 for new library:
Foreign Office Architects, Foster + Partners, Hopkins, Mecanoo, OMA, Schmidt Hammer Lassen, Wilkinson Eyre
Est. £193m
Carabanchel 16 – housing, Madrid, Spain
2007
Cineplex + John Lewis Store, Leicester, England
2007-
Dulnyouk Publishers HQ, Paju Book City, nr Seoul, South Korea
2006
Euston Station Regeneration, London
2008-
For British Land / Network Rail
La Rioja technology transfer centre, Logroño, La Rioja, Spain
2007-
Masterplan for 2012 Olympic Games, east London
2012
Selected in 2004 with Allies & Morrison, HOK Architects and EDAW
Meydan-Umraniye retail complex, Istanbul, Turkey
2007
Police Station, Costa Blanca, Spain
-
Spanish Pavilion, Expo 2005
2005
Torrevieja Theatre, Spain, Spain
2005
Trinity EC3 tower, London, UK
2007-
for Beetham, being revised due to new heritage protected view
Foreign Office Architecture
Shortlisted projects:
As part of United Architects
Ground Zero project, New York, USA
2003
Foreign Office Architects - Hadspen Parabola path layout designers
Current Foreign Office Architects Building:
Latham House Redevelopment, Aldgate, City of London, UK
for the Beetham Organisation
Other Beetham Organisation buildings include – by Ian Simpson Architects
Foreign Office Architects : Ravensbourne College building, London
Foreign Office Architects - featured Buildings:
Yokohama Ferry Terminal, Tokyo, Japan
Diagonal Mar - Barcelona Forum, Barcelona, Spain
Foreign Office Architects - Lecture at RIAS Convention 2004 by Farshid Moussavi:
Foreign Office Architects, London
Farshid studied in Dundee for her first three years at University and proposed to show us four infrastructure projects. She claimed to be ‘more interested in the plastic aspect of architecture’; ‘we try to compose new aggregates, a synthetic material… geometry in our projects has been a very important tool…constantly layering decisions..at a certain moment the project freezes…precise crystallisations of decisions’. First we were shown a simple flowing train station in Korea, then a competition in Venice that was not judged as the ‘courier didn’t deliver that day, lost to Norman Foster with a shed’. Next came FOA’s Barcelona Forum 2004 proposals on the seafront. The architecture is generated by a complex tiling geometry that is ‘not matched by nature but generative of it’: lots of diagrams interspersed with photos and sketch images show a very logical and technologically-rooted practice. I’m reminded of Future Systems and, to a certain extent, my old boss Eva Jiricna. The earth ‘dunes’ are ‘grown out of very rational decisions, a geometrical exploration’, organic and rationalist in the same breath.
Yokohama Ferry Terminal from Foreign Office Architects via RIAS in 2004: Saturo Mashima
Finally, the finale. Yokohama. This is the kind of project many of us dream of. After the description of the initial 32 sections becoming 124, and the ability to keep control of such a large irregular geometry building, I felt drained and guess that many of the audience were between bafflement and amazement. Farshid wanted users to get close to the heavy structure: ‘at times it is more baroque like’ and in the terminal, more classical. She asked ‘how far you can take a package to make a system’. I enjoyed her simple pursuit of simplicity, the rough wood outside, the smooth inside, also the inventiveness of it all, ‘the floor became a kind of bench…bodily contact with the buildings is… very effective’. Some of the ideas and geometries seemed a little contrived, and expensive, but the radical newness forces us to evaluate the potential of building anew.
Yokohama Ferry Terminal from Foreign Office Architects via RIAS in 2004
Foreign Office Architects : Spanish project
Auditoria Park, Forum / Parc dels Auditoris
Diagonal Mar - Barcelona Forum
2004
Foreign Office Architecture: Alejandro Zaera-Polo + Farshid Moussavi, Architects
photo © adrian welch
Like the Yokohama Ferry Terminal also by Foreign Office Architecture this intervention fuses landscape with sculpture to make architecture: flowing and undulating tessellated strips run along the seafront to make 'man-made dunes'.
photo © adrian welch
Auditoria Park images available upon request: Photos 1280x1024 pixels, 72dpi
Foreign Office Architects - Exhibition:
Breeding Architecture
ICA - Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
first UK exhibition
29 Nov - 29 Feb 2004
Designing Modern Britain - Design Museum
- 26 Nov 2006
Design Museum, London
8th Venice Architecture Biennale - 2002
FOA exhibition : British Pavilion
Yokohama Port Terminal
Foreign Office Architects : Venice Architecture Biennale
Alejandro Zaera Polo
born in Madrid, Spain - 1963
Farshid Moussavi
born in Shiraz, Iran - 1965
Foreign Office Architects - Education:
Alejandro Zaera Polo
1981-88 ETS of Architecture, Madrid, Spain
1988-90 Harvard Design School, USA - Masters degree in Architecture
Farshid Moussavi
1983-86 University of Dundee, Scotland, UK
1986-87 Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Genoa, Italy
1987- Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, UK
1988-90 Harvard Design School, USA - Masters degree in Architecture
1991 Rem Koolhaas / Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Foreign Office Architects -Teaching:
1993- Architectural Association, London, UK
University of Princeton, USA
UCLA, USA
Columbia, USA
2002 - Zaera Polo : Dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, Netherlands
2002 - Moussavi : Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria
Foreign Office Architects Books:
Foreign Office Architects: Working, University of Michigan Press, 2005
Albert Ferre, The Yokohama Project: Foreign Office Architects, Actar, 2003
Agneta Eriksson, Foreign Office Architects, Eriksson + Ronnefalk Forlag, 2001
World Architecture : e-architect - a guide to key buildings across the globe
Buildings / photos for the Foreign Office Architects page welcome:
info@e-architect.co.uk
Foreign Office Architects - Spanish buildings in context
Website: www.f-o-a.net