| Foreign Office Architects,
Building, England, Images,
Studio, Photos, Projects Farshid Moussavi + Alejandro Zaera Polo, London, UK e-architect |
| Foreign Office Architects |
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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 |