Farshid Moussavi Biography

Farshid Moussavi is the principal of Farshid Moussavi Architecture and a Professor in Practice in the Department of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design (FMA). She received her education at Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, and Dundee University. She was formerly co-founder and co-principal of London-based Foreign Office Architects (FOA), which was recognized as one of the world's most innovative design firms, merging architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture in a variety of international projects. She previously worked at Genoa's Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Rotterdam's Office for Metropolitan Architecture. She has been a visiting professor at UCLA, Columbia, Princeton, and several architecture schools in Europe, and has been recognized as an outstanding and committed teacher who brings a strong intellectual rigor to the discourse on architecture. She was also the Kenzo Tange Visiting Design Critic at the GSD in Spring 2005. She taught at the Architectural Association in London for eight years and was the dean of the Institute of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 2002 to 2005. Moussavi has also served on design and architectural advisory boards for major organizations such as the British Council, the Mayor of London's 'Design for London' project, the London Development Agency, the RIBA's Gold and Presidential Medals, and the Stirling Prize for Architecture. She served as Chair of the Master Jury for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004 and has been a member of the Award's Steering Committee ever since. Moussavi is on the boards of the Whitechapel Gallery and the Architecture Foundation in London. Moussavi is also a contributor for Architectural Review magazine, and her first book, The Function of Ornament, was released in 2006, based on her research and teaching at Harvard, and her second book, The Function of Form, was published in 2009. Her third book, The Function of Style, will be published in February 2015. Moussavi has completed her first USA commission, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, as well as its installation at the 13th Architecture Biennale in Venice (2012), the Victoria Beckham flagship store in London, and is currently working on a number of prestigious projects, including a residential complex in Paris's La Défense district, a residential complex in Montpellier, and a residential complex in New York. Moussavi co-authored a number of critically praised and award-winning international projects while at FOA, most notably the Yokohama International Ferry Terminal in Japan, a creative blend of industrial infrastructure and social purpose that was completed in 2001. In the United Kingdom, she completed a cineplex and pedestrian bridges in Leicester, a college in London, and the master plan and infrastructure for the London 2012 Olympic Park; in Spain, she completed a large new park with outdoor auditoriums in Barcelona, a police headquarters in La Villajoyosa, a theater building in Torrevieja, the Zona Franca Offices in Barcelona, and a technology center in Lleida. FOA represented the United Kingdom at the 8th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002, where it received numerous awards, including several RIBA Awards, the Special Award for Topography at the 9th Venice Architecture Biennale Award for Architecture, the Kanagawa Prize for Architecture in Japan, and the 2005 Charles Jencks Award for Architecture.

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