Lecture date: 2012-03-16
Hosted by Mark Cousins
This compilation of texts written since 1986 reveals a parallel activity to Alejandro Zaera-Polo’s professional life. The book is like a sniper’s log, a register of events and accumulated experience, for the purpose of identifying tendencies and assessing performance, rather than to establish truths. Written for different media and formats, texts are threaded together as a biographical experience determined by temporal and geographical factors. More than 500 images capture the time of these writings, providing a background to trigger associations.
Alejandro Zaera-Polo (born Madrid, 1963) is the founder of London- and Barcelona-based practice AZPA, which integrates architecture, urban design and landscape architecture, working for public and private sectors on an international scale. His work has consistently merged architecture with theoretical practice, identifying social, economical, technological and political trends and translating them into architectural discourse. He trained at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid and Harvard GSD. He worked at OMA in Rotterdam (1991–93), prior to establishing Foreign Office Architects (dissolved in 2011).
Zaera-Polo is Visiting Professor at Princeton and Norman Foster professor at Yale. Previously he was Dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam (2000–05) and held the Delft University Berlage Chair; he has taught at universities in the US, Japan and at the AA. His writings can be found in El Croquis, Log, A+U, Arch+, Archis and Volume, among other publications.
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