Farshid Moussavi

Farshid Moussavi is an internationally acclaimed architect and Professor in Practice of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. She was previously co-founder of the London-based Foreign Office Architects (FOA). Moussavi completed her first USA commission, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland (2012), its installation at the 13th Architecture Biennale in Venice (2012), the Victoria Beckham Flagship Store in London (2014) and is currently working on a wide range of prestigious international projects including residential complexes in the La Défense district of Paris and in Montpellier, and an office complex in the City of London, UK.

At her previous practice (FOA), she co-authored many award-winning projects including the Yokohama International Cruise Terminal and the Spanish Pavilion at the Aichi International Expo in Japan; the John Lewis Department Store and Cineplex in Leicester, UK; in Spain, the South-East Coastal Park in Barcelona, the Municipal Theatre and Auditorium in Torrevieja and the Carabanchel Social Housing in Madrid, as well as the Meydan Retail Complex in Istanbul, Turkey. The work of FOA has been widely published and exhibited, and represented Britain at the 8th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002. The firm has received numerous awards including the Enric Miralles Prize for Architecture, six RIBA Awards, the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale Award and the Charles Jencks Award for Architecture.

Farshid Moussavi trained at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, University College London and Dundee University. She has subsequently taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, the Architectural Association, the Berlage Institute and the Hoger Architectuure Instituut, and in the United States at Columbia, Princeton and the University of California in Los Angeles. Since 2006, she has been Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University.  She is the author of The Function of Ornament (2006), The Function of Form (2009) and the Function of Style (2015), based on her research and teaching at Harvard. All books have been translated into several languages.

Farshid Moussavi serves on design and architecture advisory groups internationally. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Whitechapel Gallery as well as The Architecture Foundation in London. Previously she has been a member of the advisory group to the British Council, the Mayor of London’s ‘Design for London’ initiative, the International Design Committee for the London Development Agency and the RIBA for its Gold and Presidential medals, as well as the Stirling Prize for Architecture. She has also been an external examiner for the Royal College of Art in London and at the Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design in London. In 2004, she was Chair of the Aga Khan Award Master Jury and has been a member of the Award’s Steering Committee since 2005. Since September 2011, Moussavi has been writing as a columnist for the Architectural Review magazine and, most recently in 2015, she was elected to be a Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts in London.