Personal biography examples

Farshid Moussavi

Farshid Moussavi OBE RA is an internationally acclaimed architect and Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Moussavi’s approach is characterised by an openness to change and a commitment to the intellectual and cultural life of architecture.

Alongside leading an award-winning architectural practice, Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA), she lectures regularly at arts institutions and schools of architecture worldwide and is a published author.

Farshid mousavi biography examples in hindi In addition to her commissioned work, Farshid serves on design and architecture advisory groups internationally, including the Whitechapel Gallery where she is a member of the Board of Trustees. Something Curated meets Farshid Moussavi at the Whitechapel Gallery and speaks to her about her experiences here in London and abroad, and the culturally adaptive ethos behind her firm, which has enabled it to transcend repetition and strive towards the experimentation and innovation for which it has gained international recognition. Something Curated: What chain of events led you into this industry; what was your personal journey? Each one of these is a dynamic field in its own right. You need to know what people desire and how they behave.

Moussavi was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to architecture. She was elected a Royal Academician in and Professor of Architecture at the RA Schools in

At FMA, Moussavi’s completed projects include the acclaimed Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, USA; La Folie Divine, a residential complex in Montpellier; a multi-tenure residential complex in the La Défense district of Paris, flagship stores for Victoria Beckham in London and Hong Kong, and the Toys Department for Harrods in London.

Her current projects include the Ismaili Center Houston, which will be the seventh in a series of iconic cultural buildings commissioned, over the past four decades, by his Highness the Aga Khan in the United Kingdom, Canada, Portugal, United Arab Emirates and Tajikistan. Previously Moussavi was co-founder of the internationally renowned London-based Foreign Office Architects (FOA) where she co-authored many award-winning international projects including the Yokohama International Cruise Terminal and the Spanish Pavilion at the Aichi International Expo, London’s Ravensbourne College of Media and Communication and the Leicester John Lewis Department Store and Cineplex.

Moussavi’s ideas and work are at the forefront of critical debate about architecture.

In she was Architectural curator of the Royal Academy Summer Show where she proposed a highly original approach, showing the internal mechanisms and the construction process that underpins architecture.

Farshid mousavi biography examples In her interview, Farshid talks about her renown global practice and the social, economic, and cultural stimuli that drive and interest her, advising young architects to always question what architecture can be. Why did you decide to study architecture? I liked the fact that architecture is so multi-faceted. Architecture is a spatial practice, but also a cultural, social, economic, technical, and political one too. This was as far as I got as a teenager.

Her work is deeply rooted in critical research which she carries out through FunctionLab, the research branch of FMA. FunctionLab explores cultural questions that find actualisation in the building commissions of the office, allowing for informed and innovative results. With the influential series of books that Moussavi published with Harvard, The Function of…, she has explored the theory and built history of ornament, form, and style.

Educated at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, University College London and Dundee University, Moussavi has taught and served as External Examiner in academic institutions worldwide.

She was the Chair of the Master Jury of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in , and a member of its Steering Committee between and She was also a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery and the Architecture Foundation between and Since , she has been a trustee of the Norman Foster Foundation London and New Architecture Writers (NAW) which focuses on black and minority ethnic emerging writers who are under-represented across design journalism and curation.

Moussavi also serves on the academic court of The London School of Architecture.