Alejandro Zaera-Polo Biography, Buildings and Best Books

Alejandro Zaera-Polo (born 1963) is a Spanish architect, theorist and educator. With Farshid Moussavi he founded Foreign Office Architects in London, whose Yokohama International Port Terminal, a continuous folded landscape of timber and steel, became a landmark of digital-era architecture. He has led the Berlage Institute and Princeton’s School of Architecture and writes on the politics of the building envelope.

Madrid, Harvard and OMA

Zaera-Polo was born in Madrid in 1963 and studied at the Madrid School of Architecture and at Harvard, where he received a master’s degree. He worked at OMA in Rotterdam before founding Foreign Office Architects with Farshid Moussavi in 1993.

Foreign Office Architects

FOA won the competition for the Yokohama International Port Terminal in 1995; the terminal opened in 2002. The office also designed the Spanish Pavilion at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Ravensbourne College in London and buildings in Spain and the United Kingdom before the partners separated in 2009.

Teaching and writing

He was dean of the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and of the Princeton University School of Architecture, and leads the practice AZPML. His essays, collected in The Sniper’s Log, examine architecture, politics and the envelope.