Farshid Moussavi

Farshid Moussavi
Born 1965
Shiraz, Iran
Nationality British
Alma mater Harvard University
Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
Dundee University
Occupation Architect
Practice Farshid Moussavi Architecture
Previously Foreign Office Architects
Buildings Ōsanbashi, International Passenger Terminal, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan
John Lewis complex, Leicester, UK
Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio
Victoria Beckham Flagship Store, London, UK
Projects The Function of Ornament
The Function of Form
The Function of Style

Farshid Moussavi RA RIBA is an Iranian-born British architect, founder of Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA) and Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She was co-founder and co-principal of Foreign Office Architects (FOA) until June 2011.

Early career

Moussavi was born in 1965 in Iran and immigrated to London in 1979. She trained in architecture at the Dundee School of Architecture, University of Dundee, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London and graduated with a Masters in Architecture (MArch II) from the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. Moussavi first came to prominence with FOA, the practice she co-founded in 1995. Previously, she had worked at the Renzo Piano Building Workshop and the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) before moving back to London to teach at the Architectural Association and start her own practice, Foreign Office Architects (FOA). At FOA, Moussavi co-authored the design for the award-winning Yokohama International Ferry Terminal in Japan (which was subject to an international design competition in 1995) and was part of the United Architects team who were finalists in the Ground Zero competition. She also completed a wide range of international projects including the John Lewis complex in Leicester, England and the Meydan retail complex in Istanbul, Turkey.

Later career

Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland

In June 2011, Moussavi announced the opening of her new practice, Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA), based in London. In October 2012, FMA's first museum and first building in America, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, opened to the public. In August 2012, its installation titled 'Architecture and Affects' featured at the 13th edition of Venice Architecture Biennale in Italy. FMA has also designed Victoria Beckham's flagship store in London, which opened in September 2014. The practice is currently working on a number of international projects including residential complexes in Montpellier and La Défense district of Paris, France, as well as an office tower in London, UK. The practice was a finalist for the Museum and Educational Centre of the Polytechnic Museum and Lomonosov Moscow State University competition and joint winner of the international competition for the new headquarters of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne.

Moussavi has served on numerous design committees including the Mayor of London's Design for London Advisory Group and LDA International Design Committee, the RIBA Gold and Presidents Medals, the Stirling Prize and the Venice Architecture Biennale. She was Chair of the Master Jury of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004, and a member of the Award's Steering Committee between 2005-2015. She was an external examiner for the Royal College of Art in London from 2010-2013 and for the Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design from 2014-2016, and has been a columnist for the Architectural Review. She is currently an external examiner for The Architectural Association in London and serves on the academic court of The London School of Architecture. She is also a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery as well as the Architecture Foundation in London, a role she has maintained since 2009.

Research

Farshid Moussavi at the Tate Gallery

Alongside her professional practice, Moussavi has held a longstanding commitment to research across the academic and professional field of architecture. Since 2005, she has been Professor in Practice at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Previously, Moussavi taught at the Architectural Association in London for eight years (1993–2000), and was subsequently appointed as Head of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (2002–2005). She has been a visiting professor of architecture at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, the Hoger Architectuur Instituut Sint-Lucas in Gent, and in the USA, at UCLA, Columbia University and Princeton University.

Moussavi's research, which began while teaching at the Architectural Association in the early 90s, has aimed to identify the instruments that allow architectural design to embed built forms with intelligence and creative possibilities. Instead of importing external theoretical models from other fields, Moussavi has focused on those that are specifically architectural, exploring the potentials of the diagram, information technology, landscape, iconography, new construction technologies, blank envelopes and tessellation as tools that could be used to develop alternative theoretical models for the practice of architecture.

Installation exploring affect for Common Ground at 13th Venice Biennale

Since 2004, Moussavi's research has focused predominantly on how architecture involves the intellectual assembly of matter, providing each built form with inherent affects and sensations. Her work in aesthetics is influenced by a range of philosophers, notably Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Following from Gilles Deleuze's work on affect, she proposes that built forms' affects play a critical role in the daily experiences of individuals and the cultures which develop from them. Like active forces, they affect patterns of thinking and behaving. Moussavi argues that, in order for culture to evolve, architects need to produce novel affects. It is not what built forms represent but how they function affectively that makes architecture a critical cultural practice.

Publications

Moussavi has published three books: The Function of Ornament, The Function of Form and The Function of Style in conjunction with her teaching at Harvard, all of which investigate the role of affect in contemporary architecture.

The Function of Ornament by Farshid Moussavi and Michael Kubo

In The Function of Ornament (2006), Moussavi proposes that ornament has always carried a function, and that function is an aesthetic and cultural production. In this book, she argues against definitions of ornament as a being symbolic and functioning through the representation of something else rather than through its own actuality.

In The Function of Form (2009), Moussavi further explores non-representational forms. Fundamental to Moussavi's proposal is that, due to the speed at which technology, the environment and culture are changing, the rate of change in contemporary architecture has shifted from a process of overhaul and replacement to a mode of continuous and incremental change.

The third volume in Moussavi's Function series, The Function of Style (2015) interrogates what the function of style is today.

Selected projects

La Défense Residential Complex, Nanterre
Les Jardins de la Lironde Residential Complex, Montpellier

Farshid Moussavi Architecture

Foreign Office Architects

Yokohama International Passenger Terminal

Selected awards

Detail of the façade of Edificio Bambú (literally "Bamboo Building" Carabanchel Social Housing in Madrid).

Books and articles

Books

Articles

References

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