Where Architects Live. Exhibition. Shigeru Ban, David Chipperfield, Bijoy Jain...

Shigeru Ban was born in Tokyo in 1957 and after studying architecture in Los Angeles and New York, he opened an architectural practice in Tokyo, in 1985, with offices in Paris and New York, and has designed projects worldwide from private houses to large-scale museums.

His cardboard tube structures have aroused enormous interest. As long ago as 1986, he discovered the benefits of this recyclable and resilient material that is also easy to process. Shigeru Ban built the Japanese pavilion for the Expo 2000 world exposition at Hanover – a structure made of cardboard tubes that measured 75 meters in length and 15 meters in height. All the materials used in the structure were recycled after the exhibition. He developed a genuine style of "emergency architecture" as a response to the population explosion and natural disasters: the foundations of his low-cost houses are made of beer crates filled with sand, and the walls consist of foil-covered cardboard tubes. A house of this sort can be erected in less than seven hours and is considerably more sturdy than a tent.

Shigeru Ban is currently a Professor of Architecture at Keio University and is also a guest lecturer at various other universities across the globe; his works are so exceptional that he was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture in 2005. "Time" magazine describes him as one of the key innovators of the 21st century in the field of architecture and design.

Shigeru Ban has designed projects such as Centre Pompidou Metz and Nine Bridges Golf Clubhouse in Korea. Current projects include new headquarters for Swatch and Omega in Switzerland.

Sir David Alan Chipperfield was born in London in 1953 and was raised on a farm in Devon, in the southwest of England. He studied architecture at the Kingston School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, graduating in 1980. He later worked with Douglas Stephen, Norman Foster, and Richard Rogers before founding his own firm, David Chipperfield Architects, in 1985.

The firm has grown to include offices in London, Berlin (1998), Shanghai (2005), Milan (2006), and Santiago de Compostela (2022). His first notable commission was a commercial interior for Issey Miyake in London, which led him to work in Japan. In the United Kingdom, his first significant building was the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, completed in 1997.

Chipperfield has developed over one hundred projects across Asia, Europe, and North America, including civic, cultural, academic, and residential buildings. In Germany, he led the reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin (1993–2009) and the construction of the James-Simon-Galerie (1999–2018).

He has been a professor at various universities in Europe and the United States, including the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart and Yale University. In 2012, he curated the 13th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. In 2017, he established the RIA Foundation in Galicia, Spain, dedicated to research on sustainable development in the region.

He is a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and has been recognized as an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Bund Deutscher Architekten (BDA). He has received numerous awards, including the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 2011, the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association in 2013, and the Pritzker Prize in 2023. In 2009, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, in 2010 he was knighted for his services to architecture, and in 2021 he was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour in the United Kingdom.

Chipperfield's career is distinguished by his focus on the relationship between architecture and its context, as well as his commitment to sustainability and the preservation of architectural heritage.

Zaha Hadid, (Bagdad, 31 October 1950 – Miami, 31 March 2016) founder of Zaha Hadid Architects, was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize (considered to be the Nobel Prize of architecture) in 2004 and is internationally known for both her theoretical and academic work.

Each of her dynamic and innovative projects builds on over thirty years of revolutionary exploration and research in the interrelated fields of urbanism, architecture and design. Hadid’s interest lies in the rigorous interface between architecture, landscape and geology as her practice integrates natural topography and human-made systems, leading to experimentation with cutting-edge technologies. Such a process often results in unexpected and dynamic architectural forms.

Education: Hadid studied architecture at the Architectural Association from 1972 and was awarded the Diploma Prize in 1977.

Teaching: She became a partner of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, taught at the AA with OMA collaborators Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, and later led her own studio at the AA until 1987. Since then she has held the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the Sullivan Chair at the University of Illinois, School of Architecture, Chicago; guest professorships at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg; the Knolton School of Architecture, Ohio and the Masters Studio at Columbia University, New York. In addition, she was made Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture and Commander of the British Empire, 2002. She is currently Professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria and was the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Awards: Zaha Hadid’s work of the past 30 years was the subject of critically-acclaimed retrospective exhibitions at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2006, London’s Design Museum in 2007 and the Palazzo della Ragione, Padua, Italy in 2009. Her recently completed projects include the MAXXI Museum in Rome; which won the Stirling award in 2010. Hadid’s outstanding contribution to the architectural profession continues to be acknowledged by the most world’s most respected institutions. She received the prestigious ‘Praemium Imperiale’ from the Japan Art Association in 2009, and in 2010, the Stirling Prize – one of architecture’s highest accolades – from the Royal Institute of British Architects. Other recent awards include UNESCO naming Hadid as an ‘Artist for Peace’ at a ceremony in their Paris headquarters last year. Also in 2010, the Republic of France named Hadid as ‘Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ in recognition of her services to architecture, and TIME magazine included her in their 2010 list of the ‘100 Most Influential People in the World’. This year’s ‘Time 100’ is divided into four categories: Leaders, Thinkers, Artists and Heroes – with Hadid ranking top of the Thinkers category.

studio MK27 was founded at the beginning of the 80’s by Marcio Kogan and today is joined by 20 architects, besides collaborators in numerous countries around the world. The architects of the Studio develop the projects from start to finish, and sign as the projects co-authors. The Office has won numerous international awards such as: Wallpaper Design Awards, Record House, Interior Record, D&AD, LEAF Awards, Dedalo Minosse, Barbara Cappochin of the International Biennial of Padova, Spark Awards and World Architecture Festival. In 2011, Wallpaper and Época considered Marcio Kogan as one of the 100 most influential people and received the title of honorary member of the AIA, American Institute of Architects and in 2012 represented Brazil in the Venice Biennial of Architecture. In Brazil he has received 13 awards of the Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil, IAB (Brazilian Institute of Architects). The projects of studio MK27 are valued for their formal simplicity, always working with special attention to the details and finishings. Marcio Kogan and the architects of the team, great admirers of the Brazilian modernist generation, seek to fulfill the difficult task of giving continuity to this line of production.

Libeskind’s studio has designed various museums and other cultural and public buildings all over the world. Libeskind himself has also held many academic positions, and he was the first holder of the Frank O. Gehry Chair at the University of Toronto. Among the numerous awards he has received is the Hiroshima Art Prize (2001) for artists who propagate international peace and understanding through their work. It was the first time the prize was awarded to an architect.

In 2011 Libeskind delivered the eighth Auschwitz Never Again Lecture in Amsterdam, and on that occasion he also received the Annetje Fels-Kupferschmidt Award, presented annually to an individual or organization for the exceptional way it has realized the goals of the Dutch Auschwitz Committee.