Alejandro Zaera-Polo
Alejandro Zaera-Polo (born Madrid, 1963) is an accomplished contemporary architect and co-founder of London-based Foreign Office Architects. His work has consistently merged the practice of architecture with theoretical practice, providing a strong intellectual rigour to the discourse on architecture through a sharp capacity to identify social and political trends and creatively extrapolate them.
He trained at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, graduating with Honors, and went on to do a Master in Architecture (MARCH II) at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, USA, where he graduated with Distinction. He collaborated with at OMA in Rotterdam between 1991 and 1993, prior to establishing Foreign Office Architects in 1993.
Alejandro Zaera-Polo has also had an extensive involvement in education at an international level since 1993. He is currently Visiting Professor at Princeton SOA, and occupies the Berlage Chair at the Technical University in Delft, the Netherlands, and was Dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam from 2000-2005, resetting the institution’s academic compass through pedagogy and public events towards the creation of new instruments of architecture and urban design conceived through practice in globalised conditions. In tandem with holding the Delft Chair he is a member of the Institute’s current Research Board. He has been Visiting Critic at Columbia GSAPP, Princeton SOA, UCLA School of Architecture, and he led a Diploma Unit for eight years at the Architectural Association in London.
Alejandro Zaera-Polo co-founded the London-based firm, Foreign Office Architects (FOA), which is recognized as one of the most creative design firms in the world, deftly integrating architecture, urban design and landscape architecture in their projects. Under his theoretical stewardship, FOA has produced critically acclaimed and award winning projects for the public and private sector on an international scale.
