- "We give Foster 2,500 euros more because he's special, and we’re going to fire Zaha's." I swear it’s absolutely true.... I should have recorded it.
- The fundamental difference between the EMSV and the Community of Madrid is that EMSV is a professional and serious customer, who knows what it's doing and is very experienced, while the Comunidad de Madrid has no idea, they don’t know what they are doing, they don’t know how to set budgets, they don’t know what buildings are worth..
Alejandro Zaera-Polo is an architect and co-founder of London, Zurich and Princeton-based Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Maider Llaguno Architecture (AZPML).He graduated from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid with Honors and obtained an MARCH2 degree from Harvard GSD with Distinction. He worked at OMA in Rotterdam prior to establishing first FOA in 1993, and AZPA in 2011, the vehicles where he has developed a successful international professional practice since.
In parallel to his professional activities, Alejandro Zaera-Polo has developed a substantial role within academia. He was the Dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and currently occupies the Berlage Chair at the Technical university of Delft. He is also a Visiting Professor at Princeton University and the first recipient of the Norman R. Foster Visiting Professorship at Yale. He has published extensively as a theorist in El Croquis, Quaderns, A+U, Arch+, Volume, Log and many other international magazines and is a member of the London School of Economics Urban Age project.
