Farshid Moussavi

Professor in Practice of Architecture

Farshid Moussavi is Professor in Practice in the Department of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design and principal of Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA). In 2015, she was elected a Royal Academician. She trained at Harvard GSD, the Bartlett School of Architecture University College London and Dundee University. She was previously co-founder and co-principal of the London-based Foreign Office Architects (FOA), recognised as one of the world’s most creative design firms, integrating architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture in a wide range of projects internationally.  Prior to this, she worked with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Genoa and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam. Recognized as an outstanding and committed teacher, bringing a strong intellectual rigor to the discourse on architecture, she has been a visiting professor at UCLA, Columbia, Princeton, and at several architecture schools in Europe; she was also the Kenzo Tange Visiting Design Critic at the GSD in Spring 2005. She taught for eight years at the Architectural Association in London and was the head of the Institute of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she taught from 2002 until 2005.

Moussavi has also served on design and architecture advisory groups for key institutions including the British Council, the Mayor of London’s ‘Design for London’ initiative, the London Development Agency, RIBA’s Gold and Presidential Medals and the Stirling Prize for Architecture. In 2004, she was Chair of Master Jury of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, following which she served as a member of the Award’s Steering Committee until 2015. Moussavi is a member of the Board of Trustees of both the Whitechapel Gallery and the Architecture Foundation in London. Moussavi is also a columnist for the Architectural Review magazine and has published published The Function of Ornament in 2006, The Function of Form in 2009, and her third book titled The Function of Style in 2015, based on her research and teaching at Harvard.

At FMA, Moussavi has completed her first USA commission, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, its installation at the 13th Architecture Biennale in Venice (2012), the flagship store for Victoria Beckham in London, and as well is currently working on a wide range of prestigious projects including a residential complex in the La Défense district of Paris (under construction), a residential complex in Montpellier (under construction), a department store in Paris; an office complex in the City of London.  At FOA, Moussavi co-authored numerous critically-acclaimed and award-winning international projects, most notably the Yokohama International Ferry Terminal in Japan, an imaginative combination of industrial infrastructure and social function completed in 2001. Other projects she completed at FOA include, in the UK, 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, 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, a technology center in Logrono and social housing in Carabanchel; the Bluemoon Hotel in Groningen, The Netherlands; the Spanish Pavilion in the 2005 Aichi International Expo, Japan; a retail complex and civic square in Meydan, Istanbul; a publisher’s headquarters in Paju, Korea. FOA represented Britain at the 8th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002 and was awarded 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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