AZPA. Alejandro Zaera-Polo's new office

Zaera-Polo’s partner in Foreign Office Architects, Farshid Moussavi, launched her new studio earlier this week.Alejandro Zaera former Foreign Office Architects co-founder Alejandro Zaera-Polo has opened his new studio, Alejandro Zaera-Polo Architecture (AZPA). The pair have now divorced after more than 10 years together and this week both announced that they had set up new practices.

British Pavilion of the 8th edition of the Venice Biennale.

Foreign Office Architects closed in 2009.The information below is from Alejandro Zaera-Polo Architecture: As of last week, Alejandro Zaera-Polo Architecture (AZPA) started trading as an international architectural practice with offices in London and Barcelona.

AZPA is a legacy practice of FOA and will be the vehicle for my professional activities. AZPA will continue a multidisciplinary commitment to innovation in architecture and urban design, combining technical expertise with design excellence.

Our projects include a wide range of scales, typologies and locations. These range from the Birmingham New Street Station Redevelopment in the UK to the Cerezales Foundation in Leon, Spain. Other projects include the 2014 ISAF Sailing World Championship Facilities in Santander, the Gapyong Community Centre in Korea, the Hospital Universitari Arnau de Vilanova en Lleida and the BioPol Science Centre in Barcelona, among others.

Zaera-Polo admitted: “The past 18 months has been a very difficult process. There have been moments which were very difficult. There is a sense of a weight being lifted. It’s much better to be in a different office and being able to do projects separately.”

She said: “I want to thank my staff and clients for their support. We have some exciting projects to work on and we’re very optimistic for the future.”

The pair met while working at Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture and founded Foreign Office Architects in 1995.

Read less

View more images

Metalocus recommends

Extension to the St. Clemens kindergarten by schleicher.ragaller. Photograph by Zooey Braun Fotografie

Luminous and functional. Extension to the St. Clemens kindergarten by schleicher.ragaller

Mural paintings for the Chapels of Baptism and Penance in the University Church of the UFV by Ramos Alderete. Photograph by Amores Pictures

Mural abstraction in the University Church of the UFV by Ramos Alderete

Séraphin of Urtsadzor by BUREAU. Photograph by Dylan Perrenoud

A dialogic multi-species refuge. Séraphin of Urtsadzor by BUREAU

Alejandro Zaera-Polo

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.