“Ecologies of the Envelope: A Material History and Theory of Architectural Surfaces”
Grant Auditorium, The Falk School
Alejandro Zaera-Polo graduated from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid with Honors in 1988 and obtained an M.Arch 2 degree from Harvard GSD with Distinction in 1991. He worked at OMA in Rotterdam prior to establishing first FOA in 1993, an international award winning practice that built projects such as the Yokohama International Cruise Terminal in Japan and participated in projects such as the Ground Zero competition in New York, and the London Olympics masterplan. He is a principal at AZPML.
In parallel to his professional activities, Alejandro Zaera-Polo has developed a substantial role within academia. He was the dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton University and was the dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. He was a visiting professor at Princeton University and the inaugural Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor at Yale School of Architecture. Alejandro is currently Professor of Architecture at the School of Architecture in Princeton University.
He has published extensively in El Croquis, Quaderns, A+U, Arch+, Volume, Log and many other international magazines. The work of Alejandro Zaera-Polo has been widely published and exhibited. It represented Britain at the 8th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002; he has received the Enric Miralles Prize for Architecture, seven RIBA Awards, the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale Award, and the Charles Jencks Award for Architecture.
