Namely, words
Part 1

Alexander Brodsky
Philip Christou
Tony Fretton
Günter Günschel
Sam Jacob
Peter Märkli
Studio Mumbai / Bijoy Jain
Denise Scott Brown
Inge Vinck
Jan de Vylder
Peter Wilson
Zoe Zenghelis

Friday 28 May — Saturday 10 July 2021

text | bio | press release

Alexander Brodsky

Alexander Brodsky, born in Moscow in 1955, is an artist and architect and lives and works in Moscow. He is the son of artist, book illustrator and architect Savva Brodsky (1923—1982). Brodsky graduated from the Moscow Institute of Architecture in 1978 before first receiving international acclaim in the 1980s with his utopian etchings, and was a key member of the after so-called Paper Architects. In 1990 Brodsky travelled to New York and then moved there in 1996 to work on public projects as well as installations. Four years later he returned to Moscow where he practises freely as an architect.

Exhibitions include the Venice Biennale, 2016; Tchoban Foundation, Berlin, 2015; Moscow Biennale of contemporary Art, 2013; Calvert 22, London, 2012; Architekturzentrum Wien, Vienna, 2011; Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2010; Fondazione Sandretto, Torino, 2008; Espace Loius Vuitton, Paris, 2007; Venice Biennale, 2006; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, 2006. Aside from private collections, Alexander Brodsky’s works are part of Tate Modern and MoMA collections.

Philip Christou

Philip Christou has worked with Florian Beigel and they have been teaching architectural design together since 1985. He is Co- Director of the Architecture Research Unit. He is Professor Emeritus at the Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and De- sign, London Metropolitan University. Architectural design research, practice and teaching are given equal emphasis in this work. He regularly gives guest lectures and design workshops internationally. He has co-authored with Beigel several books, many essays in international journals, and architectural exhibitions.

Born in 1956 in Lethbridge, Alberta, in Western Canada, he studied Art History at McGill University, Montreal, and Fine Art at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada. He received a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Fine Art degrees. He worked as an assistant with the artists Krzysztof Wodiczko and Daniel Buren on gallery and public art installations following his fine art studies. He studied architecture at the Architectural Association, London. He has lived and worked in the UK since 1980.

Tony Fretton

Tony Fretton is a principal of Tony Fretton Architects with James McKinney and David Owen.
Buildings designed and realised by the practice include the Lisson Gallery London, Red House Chelsea, Fuglsang Kunstmuseum in Denmark, which was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, the new British Embassy in Warsaw, Solid 11, a multi-purpose building in Amsterdam, and most recently two apartment towers in Antwerp Harbour and the City Hall of Deinze in Belgium.
Tony Fretton was Chair of Architectural Design-Interiors at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands 1999-2013. He was visiting professor at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard in 2005-2006, at ETH Zurich in 2011-2012, Oslo School of Architecture in 2015-16, University of Navarre, Spain 2016 and ETSAB Barcelona 2017-8.Currently he is Master of Diploma Unit 2 at the Cass School London and visiting professor at the University of East London.Tony Fretton is a trustee of Docomomo London.
His sketch books are in the archive of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and project models and drawings by the practice are in the Drawing Matter Trust collection.
’Buildings and their Territories’ a monograph on the work of the practice was published by Birkhauser 2013, and ‘A E I OU: Articles Essays Interviews and Out-takes by Tony Fretton’ was published by the Dutch publisher Jap Sam books in Spring 2017

Günter Günschel

Günschel was the chair of experimental architecture at the Braunschweig School of Fine Arts from 1968 to 1998, the experimental work operating between art and architecture. In her publication Günter Günschel, la rigueur de l’imaginaire, Cornelia Escher writes: “Günter Günschel’s work reflects his research on the innovation of architectural forms.
Throughout his career dedicated to experimentation, the designer’s predilection for pure and rigorous geometry blended with his boundless imagination and expressiveness. Fascinated by mechanical processes for the production of art, he became a pioneer in the field of digital architecture. He was an early adopter of the computer in the 1980s as an experimental tool. His research on fractal geometry, a harbinger of computational architecture, places him close to the Deconstruction movement.”

Günter Günschel studied architecture at the Giebichenstein School in Halle (1947–49) then at the School of Architecture in Berlin. He is the author of numerous articles and books (notably Große Konstrukteure in 1966). He built several university housing complexes between the 1970s (Wolfsburg) and 1990s. His work is part of public collections including MoMA, New York; SFMoMA; Carnegie Museum of Arts, Pittsburgh; FRAC Centre, Orléans; Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal.

Sam Jacob

Sam Jacob is director of Sam Jacob Studio, established in 2014. The studio has just won the Victoria and Albert Museum’s competition for the transformation of its main entrance on Cromwell Road (planned to complete in 2020). Forthcoming work includes a new mixed use building in London’s Hoxton, curation of The Lie of the Land at the Milton Keynes Gallery, a new public toilet in London’s West End and work for the National Collections Centre in Wiltshire.
The studio’s recent projects include ‘Fear and Love’ at the Design Museum, public realm design and cultural strategy for a south London market and the V&A’s first international gallery in Shenzhen.

Jacob’s work has been published and exhibited internationally including at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016 and 2014 (where, as part of FAT he was co-curator of the British Pavilion), ‘Spaces Without Drama’ at the Graham Foundation (2017), Chicago, ‘A Very Small Part of Architecture’ in Highgate Cemetery (2016), the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2017) and ‘Disappear Here’ at the RIBA Architecture Gallery, London (2018).

Sam Jacob is currently a professor at University of Illinois at Chicago and visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong and has taught at Yale, Karlsruhe HfG and the AA in London where he also established AA Nightschool, a programme that opened up new ways of sharing of architectural knowledge. He has been a columnist for the AJ, Art Review and Dezeen and is the author of ‘Make It Real, Architecture as Enactment” published by Strelka Press.
Previously he was a founding director of FAT Architecture, a practice that was hailed as “changing the architectural weather” for its idiosyncratic approach. FAT’s built projects included the Heerlijkheid Hoogvliet in Rotterdam, A House for Essex with Grayson Perry, the BBC Studios in Cardiff and the Blue House in Hackney.

Peter Märkli

Peter Märkli’s work reveals an unconventional approach to architecture, one that is extremely personal. It straddles boundaries of architecture and art.

Born 1953 in Zurich, Peter set up practice 1978. His first works were houses that immediately marked him out as a serious architectural mind. His breakthrough building was La Congiunta, the 1992 ‘house for art’ in the canton of Ticino that houses the reliefs of the sculptor Hans Josephsohn. Since then projects have become larger and more complex, culminating in his Visitor Centre for Novartis Basel in 2006 and his internationally recognised offices, New Synthes, Solothurn of 2012.
Former exhibitions of his work include those held at: Betts Project, London (2020, 2017, 2014), Common Ground (2012), the 13th Annual International Venice Architecture Biennale; Architektur Galerie, Berlin (2008 & 2005); National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2008); Architekturmuseum, Basel (2006 & 2000); Kunsthalle, Vienna (2005); Architekturgalerie, Hamburg (2003); Königliche Kunsthalle, Copenhagen (2002); and at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London (2002).

Studio Mumbai / Bijoy Jain

Studio Mumbai works with a human infrastructure of skilled artisans, technicians and draftsmen who design and build the work directly. This group shares an environment created from an iterative process, where ideas are explored through the production of large-scale mock-ups, models, material studies, sketches and drawings. Projects are developed through careful consideration of place and practice that draws from traditional skills, local building techniques, materials and an ingenuity arising from limited resources. The Studio has designed the 2016 edition of Melbourne’s MPavilion, an annual commission touted as Australia’s answer to London’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, and is having projects in India, Japan, Switzerland and South of France.

Bijoy Jain was born in Mumbai, India in 1965 and received his M. Arch from Washington University in St Louis, USA in 1990. He worked with Richard Meier in Los Angeles and London between 1989 and 1995 before returning to India in 1995 to found his practice. a He has taught in Copenhagen, Yale and Mendrisio.

Exhibitions include those held at the Venice Biennale (2010, 2012 and 2016), Between the Sun and the Moon: a major monographic touring exhibition at Arc en Rêve, Centre d’Architecture Bordeaux, FR (2015), DAM Frankfurt, DE (2016) and DAC Copenhagen, DK (2016); Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, Canada (2014), Sharjah Biennial (2013), 1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces, Victoria & Albert Museum (2010).
Awards include the Global Award in Sustainable Architecture (2009), finalist for the 11th cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2010), winner of the seventh Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture Award, Finland (2012), winner of the third BSI Swiss Architecture Award (2012), most recently winner of the Grande Medaille d’Or from the Academie D’Architecture, Paris, France (2014), and the University of Hasselt, Belgium bestowed an honorary doctorate on Bijoy Jain in 2014. 

Peter Wilson

Peter Wilson is an Australian born, German based architect. He studied at the University of Melbourne, Australia, 1969-71, before attending the Architectural Association from 1972-74, and graduating with the Diploma Prize. He subsequently taught at the AA from 1974-88. In 1980 he set up his practice Bolles+Wilson with Julia Bolles-Wilson and relocated to Münster , Germany in 1989. Alongside design work, Peter Wilson has lectured and run studios worldwide, acting as Guest Professor for both the Kunsthochschule Weißensee and the Accademia di Architettura Mendrisio. He was a visiting professor from 2013 to 2014 at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and an International Fellow of the RIBA since 2014. In 2009 he was awarded the President’s Prize of the Australian Institute of Architects and in 2013 the Gold Medal of the Australian Institute of Architects.

Zoe Zenghelis

Zoe Zenghelis is an Athenian artist who has been living and working in London since her student years. After studying painting in Athens she continued her study in stage design and painting at the Regent Street Polytechnic under Frank Auerbach, Lawrence Gowing, and Leon Kossoff. She started her painting career as a founding member of OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture), whose collaboration with other OMA members has widened their horizons and opened new opportunities for them in painting and architecture. Her paintings for OMA have been exhibited in many museums and galleries. Zenghelis’ independent works as a painter have been widely exhibited and published. The paintings are inspired by metropolitan structure, landform, and abstract tectonics. Yet the imagery is quintessentially modern and modernist: it is an imagery of the fragment, the collage, the assemblage, the parts standing for the whole, and often greater than the whole. From 1982 to 1993, in partnership with Madelon Vriesendorp, she ran the Colour Workshop at the Architectural Association School of Architecture