ARCHITECTURE: 10 Architects-Advice to the Young

“Empathy is one of the biggest superpowers you can have, almost in any field, but especially in architecture”. Watch ten world-renowned architects give their advice on the role of the architect in the 21st century.

Renzo Piano (b. 1937) is a lauded Italian architect. His most known buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, The Shard in London, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. In 1998, Piano won the highly prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, the jury comparing him to Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, praising him for “his intellectual curiosity and problem-solving techniques as broad and far-ranging as those earlier masters of his native land,” and crediting him with “redefining modern and postmodern architecture.” In 2006, Piano was selected by TIME as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. For more see: http://www.rpbw.com/

Tatiana Bilbao (b. 1972) is a Mexican architect. The landscape plays a crucial role in her work, and she works with it on various scales – from the Mexican countryside through urban scenes to the ‘internal landscape’ of the individual building. Her wide-ranging work includes structures along a pilgrimage route in Mexico, a botanical garden, and a project in Mexico City, where a line of light will enable women to walk safely through remote parts of the city. In 2004, she founded Tatiana Bilbao Estudio with projects in China, Europe, and Mexico. At the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2015, Bilbao presented a “flexible building prototype,” using modular components that could be adjusted to fit the number of inhabitants, and with materials that could be varied to suit the climate. The Mexican government commissioned the design to help alleviate the country’s housing shortage with low-cost solutions. Bilbao is the recipient of prestigious awards including the UNESCO Global Award for Sustainable Architecture Prize in 2014. For more see: https://tatianabilbao.com

Frank Gehry (b. 1929) is a Canadian-born American architect, who is known for his trademark sculptural style. Although critical opinion is sometimes divided over his radical, whimsical structures, Gehry’s work made architecture popular in a way not seen in the U.S. since Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). Several of Gehry’s buildings have become world-renowned attractions and have been cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which later led Vanity Fair to label him as “the most important architect of our age.” Among his best-known buildings are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (which fellow architect Philip Johnson once dubbed “the greatest building of our time”), Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, Neuer Zollhof in Dusseldorf,  Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, Dancing House in Prague, Biomuseo in Panama City, and Cinémathèque Francaise in Paris. Furthermore, his private residence in Santa Monica is the award-winning ‘Gehry House’. Gehry is the recipient of multiple prestigious awards including the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1989), the Praemium Imperiale (1992), National Medal of Arts (1998), AIA Gold Medal (1999), Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement (2000), Prince of Asturias Award (2014), J. Paul Getty Medal (2015) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2016).

Kengo Kuma (b. 1954) is considered one of the most significant contemporary Japanese architects. In 1987 he founded the Spatial Design Studio (now Kengo Kuma & Associates) and opened his Paris Studio in 2008. In 1987, he founded the Spatial Design Studio. In 1990, Kengo Kuma & Associates, his own studio was established. During the 1998–1999 academic year, he was a visiting professor at the Faculty of Environmental Information at Keio University. In 2008, Kuma earned a Ph.D. from Keio University. In October 2021 The Waseda International House of Literature (The Haruki Murakami Library) will open. Kuma is the Japan National Stadium designer in Tokyo, which has been built for the 2020 Summer Olympics. For more see: https://kkaa.co.jp

Anna Heringer, born in 1977, grew up in Laufen, a small town at the Austrian-Bavarian border close to Salzburg. At the age of 19, she lived in Bangladesh for almost a year, where she had the chance to learn from the NGO Dipshikha about sustainable development work. The main lesson here was the experience that the most successful development strategy is to trust in existing, readily available resources and to make the best out of them instead of getting dependent on external systems. Eight years later, in 2005, she tried to transfer this philosophy into the field of architecture. Today, as an architect and honorary professor of the UNESCO Chair of Earthen Architecture, Building Cultures, and Sustainable Development she is focusing on the use of natural building materials. She has been actively involved in development cooperation in Bangladesh since 1997. Her diploma work, the METI School in Rudrapur got realized in 2005 and won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2007. Over the years, Studio Anna Heringer has realized further projects in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Anna is lecturing worldwide at conferences, including TED, and has been visiting professor at various universities such as Harvard, ETH Zurich, and TU Munich. She received numerous honors: the Obel Award 2020, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, the AR Emerging Architecture Award, the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s GSD, and a RIBA International Fellowship. Anna’s work has been widely published and exhibited in the MoMA New York, the V&A Museum in London, and at the Venice Biennale among other places. For more see: https://www.anna-heringer.com/vision/

Norman Robert Foster (b. 1935) is an English architect and designer, who is considered one of the most prolific architects of his generation. He is the founder of Foster and Partners (1967) and responsible for renowned buildings such as London City Hall and Millennium Bridge (London), Reichstag (Berlin), Bilbao Metro, Hearst Tower (New York), Hong Kong International Airport, Beijing Capital International Airport and Apple Spaceship Headquarters (est. 2016). Foster, who is a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers and winner of the society’s highest award, The Minerva Medal, has received several awards such as the Pritzker-prize in 1999 (often referred to as the Nobel Prize of architecture), the Stirling Prize in 1998 and 2004, as well as the Aga Khan Award for Architecture – the biggest architectural award in the world – for the University of Technology Petronas in Malaysia (2007). He was knighted in 1990, and in 1999 he has created a life peer, as Baron Foster of Thames Bank, of Reddish in the County of Greater Manchester. For more see: https://www.fosterandpartners.com/

Bjarke Ingels (b. 1974) is a Danish architect and founding partner of BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group – located in Copenhagen, New York, and London. In 2013 BIG was chosen to redesign the Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum and research complex in Washington, a project that will be implemented over 20 years. His projects include The Mountain, a residential complex in Copenhagen, and the innovative Danish Maritime Museum in Elsinore. In 2004 he received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale and the Danish Crown Prince’s Culture Prize in 2011. Moreover, BIG received the Architizer’s Firm of the Year Award in 2014. For more see: https://big.dk

Alejandro Aravena (b. 1967) is a Chilean architect. In 2001 he founded the socially conscious architectural office Elemental, which focuses on projects of public interest such as housing, public space, infrastructure, and transportation, and they first gained recognition for their work with social housing projects in Chile. Elemental also design other kinds of buildings from museums through universities to office buildings, not only in Chile but also in the U.S., Mexico, China, and Switzerland. Exhibitions of their work have been included at e.g. the Sao Paulo Biennale 2007 and MoMA in New York City (2010). Aravena is the recipient of prestigious awards including the Silver Lion (2008), the Erich Schelling Architecture Medal (2006), a Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2008), and the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2016. From 2009 to 2015 he was a member of the Pritzker Architecture Prize Jury, and in 2016, he was the director and curator of the Architecture Section of the Venice Biennale.

Anne Lacaton (b. 1955) is a French architect and partner of Lacaton & Vassal, which she formed in 1989 with Jean-Philipe Vassal. Some of their most significant building projects include Palais de Tokyo in Paris, FRAC Dunkerque in Dunkirk, and – in partnership with Frédéric Druot – the redesign of a housing tower in Paris, the Tour Bois-le Prêtre, which was awarded Design of the Year by the Design Museum in England. Lacaton & Vassal have received many prestigious awards including the Grand Prix national de l’architecture (2008), the Heinrich Tessenow Medal (2016), the Simon-Award from Fundació Mies van der Rohe (2017), and the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2018). For more see: https://www.lacatonvassal.com/

Anupama Kundoo (b. 1967) graduated from Sir JJ College of Architecture, the University of Mumbai in 1989, and received her Ph.D. degree from the TU Berlin in 2008. Kundoo’s internationally recognized and award-winning architecture practice started in 1990 and demonstrates a strong focus on material research and experimentation towards an architecture that has a low environmental impact and is appropriate to the socio-economic context. Kundoo has built extensively in India and has had the experience of working, researching, and teaching in a variety of cultural contexts across the world: TU Berlin, AA School of Architecture London, Parsons New School of Design New York, University of Queensland Brisbane, IUAV Venice and ETSAB Barcelona. In 2013 Kundoo received an honorable mention in the ArcVision International Prize for Women in Architecture for ‘her dedication when approaching the problem of affordability of construction and sustainability in all aspects. The same year she participated in La Biennale di Venezia directed by David Chipperfield. For more see: https://www.anupamakundoo.com/

 

Renzo Piano, Tatiana Bilbao, Alejandro Aravena, Bjarke Ingels, Anupama Kundoo, Anna Heringer, Anne Lacaton, Norman Foster, and Frank Gehry was interviewed and produced by Marc-Christoph Wagner. Kengo Kuma was interviewed by Mette Holm and produced by Christian Lund. Watch the full interviews with the architects here: https://channel.louisiana.dk/topics/architecture, Produced and edited by: Kasper Bech Dyg, © Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2021