SHARE Fellows

Serban Tiganas is one of the most well-known names from Cluj-Napoca and from the entire country in the field of architecture. He is currently the president of the Order of the Architects of Romania, institution inside which he has initiated the study of Architecture as a profession and of The Policy for Architecture in Romania.

A graduate of the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest, he is also a trainer, preoccupied with the understanding and the evolution of Romanian architecture and especially with its growing impact on peoples lives.

He is founder of “Dico & Tiganas“ office in Cluj, also being one of the founding partners of the urbanism office “Planwerk”, with whom he has taken on development strategies for public space architecture in various cities such as Sibiu, Miercurea Ciuc, Cluj-Napoca, Targu Mures, Brașov, Timisoara or Oradea. He teaches to young students at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca.

He is currently the President of the Order of Architects of Romania (OAR) and Secretary General UIA. Among the awards of his practice we mention:

• 2016: Breeam Awards, shortlist / Architizer A+ Award
• 2013: European Union Award – Mies van der Rohe for Contemporary Architecture, Nomination
• 2013: Popular Choice Award, Architizer A+ Awards, New York, Winner
• 2013: ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards
• 2012: UAR President’s Award at the National Architecture Biennale, Bucharest
• 2011: HunterDouglas – Project of the Year

Serial number certificate 001

Professor Ian Ritchie leads one of the world’s most thoughtful, original and influential contemporary collaborative architectural practices. Ian is a Royal Academician and elected member of the Akademie der Künste. He is Honorary Visiting Professor of Architecture Liverpool University; Fellow of the Society of Façade Engineering; and advises Backstage Trust. Recently he was advisor to The Ove Arup Foundation, the Director of the Centre for Urban Science and Progress NYU, and to the President of Columbia University on the Manhattanville masterplan. He has chaired many international juries including RIBA Stirling Prize, the RIAS Doolan Award, Berlin Art Prize, Czech Architecture Grand Prix Jury and the French government’s ‘Nouveaux Jeunes Albums’. He was a founder director of Rice Francis Ritchie, a design engineering practice based in Paris. He continues to lecture globally, has written several books, published poetry, and Ian’s art is held in several international galleries and museums.

His practice has received more than 100 major national and international awards. Work has been shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize on four occasions, and twice for the European Mies van der Rohe Prize. His practice recently completed the £75m Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neuroscience Research at University College London, UK, which has won many awards in 2016 including:

• British Construction Industry Award – Major Building Project of the Year (over £50m)
•  Leading European Architecture Forum (LEAF) Awards Overall Winner
•  Leading European Architecture Forum (LEAF) Awards Best Façade Design & Engineering 
•  German Design Award

And the Royal Academy of Music’s Susie Sainsbury Theatre and Angela Burgess Recital Hall which has won 20 national and international awards in 2018 and 2019 including:

• The Chicago Athenaeum/The European Centre: International Architecture Award Royal Academy of Music
• World Architecture Community Award
• Winner RIBA National Award and London Building of the Year
• British Construction Industry Award – Cultural Building of the Year
• USA Architecture Masterprize
• UK Wood Award

Philippe Samyn, a doctor in Applied Sciences, architect, civil engineer and urbanist, was born in Ghent on 1 st September 1948.

He is a member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Science, Art and Literature since 1992, a member of the financial and advisory committees of SECO Belgium scrl, and a Commander of the Order of Léopold who was ennobled to Knighthood by HRH King Albert II on July 13 th 2012. His work is based on permanent questioning, widely fed by numerous missions abroad, lateral thinking and his scientific work. More particularly, his discovery in 1997 of the volume and displacement indicators has since experienced continuous scientific development, leading to a general and open theory about the conception and predimensioning of structures.

With his team of architects and engineers, his architectural production develops in many sectors, in Europe and beyond: an opera house or a gas station, a hospital or a bridge, a research centre or an urban plan.

Serial number certificate 003

Having an education in philosophy and in architecture, Paolo Brescia graduated in 1996 in Architecture from Politecnico di Milano after spending one year at the Architectural Association in London.

Starting his career along Renzo Piano Building Workshop, he founded his practice OBR Open Building Research in 2000 with Tommaso Principi. While innovating contemporary living, OBR creates a design network around Milan, London and Mumbai – three of the most important world architectural focus points today – and succeeds very well in doing it given the long list of received awards! Among them, it is important to mention:

• 2007 AR Award for Emerging Architecture,
• 2008 Plusform Award for Best realised architecture under 40,
• 2010 European 40 Under 40 Award in Madrid,
• 2010 Rome In/Arch Ance Award for Best building realised by a young architect,
• 2011 London LEAF Award overall winner,
• 2012 Medaglia d’Oro all’Architettura Italiana,
• 2015 Milan Inarch International Award for Architecture and Design
• 2016 AAP American Architecture Prize for Architectural Design.

Since 2003 he tought for 6 years at Università degli Studi di Genova, only to return there in 2013 as a professor after teaching for 2 years at Politecnico di Milano. Moreover, the practice is cooperating in the present with several universities, such as Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, Aalto University, Academy of Architecture of Mumbai and Mimar Sinan Fine Art University.

Among the best-known works by OBR are the Pythagoras Museum, the New Galleria Sabauda in Turin, the Milanofiori Residential Complex, the Children Hospital in Parma, the Galliera Hospital in Genoa, the Lido of Genoa, the Ex Cinema Roma, the Triennale di Milano Terrace. For an overview of these projects see obr.eu. OBR’s projects have been featured in Venice Biennale of Architecture, Royal Institute of British Architects in London, Bienal de Arquitetura of Brasilia, MAXXI in Rome and Triennale di Milano.

Serial number certificate 005

Kerem Yazgan was born in Ankara in 1969. He obtained his B. Arch degree from the Middle East Technical University Department of Architecture in 1993. He worked in a diversity of architectural offices and participated in various architectural design competitions until 1996. He opened his first architectural office in 1996, after being awarded the first prize in a national architectural design competition. He received his M. Arch degree from the METU Department of Architecture in 1997. His master’s dissertation received the “Parlar Foundation Academic Award” of METU in 1998. He received awards in various architectural design competitions. Alongside opening an office, Kerem Yazgan attended the Fourth Year Architectural Design Studio in the METU Department of Architecture as a part-time instructor from 1997 to 2007.

Kerem Yazgan opened his second architectural office with his wife Begüm Yazgan, PhD. Architect in 2003, the same year in which he received his PhD degree from METU Department of Architecture. His doctoral dissertation entitled “Designography in Architecture” is about his research on the ‘systems and acts’ in architectural design. His design approach is based on the direct association of theory and practice and the systematization of the design process. He has realized a diverse number of architectural projects with the idea that he defines as “the design of the design act”, which is based on ‘writing the program’ of architectural design. In his practice, he continues to search and develop flexible, free, systematic and lucid relationships between architectural design approaches that clearly define the conceptual, production, and construction phases.

Serial number certificate 004

Vassilis Sgoutas graduated from Cape Town University in South Africa. In 1961 he co-founded Sgoutas Architects, a practice based in Athens, Greece. He is an architect who has been engaged with plenty of projects at all levels and scales of complexity. He is also a Former President of the International Union of Architects (UIA), which is of utmost importance for the meaning of his book “A Journey with the Architects of the World”.

The book he wrote, “A Journey with the Architects of the World” documents in a special way, with deep involvement and also with detached objectivity moments in the evolution of the profession and its ethos over the last twenty years.

Vassilis Sgoutas is an honorary member of the architects institutes of Australia, China, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Mexico, Panama, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, USA and Foreign Member of the State Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences. Has been awarded the medal of the Magnesia Chapter of the Technical Chamber of Greece for his “lifelong contribution to architecture”.

During his career he received numerous awards in competitions, such as two of the 30 Ministry of Public Works ex-aequo prizes for the best implemented buildings in Greece and one of 9 ex-aequo awards for innovative housing. Has participated in several activities of the International Union of Architects and was its President between 1999 – 2002. The triennial “Vassilis Sgoutas Prize” was launched by the UIA in 2007.

Serial number certificate 005

Wolf D. Prix, born in 1942 in Vienna, is co-founder, Design Principal and CEO of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU. He studied architecture at the Vienna University of Technology, the Architectural Association of London as well as at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles.

Amongst others, Wolf D. Prix taught at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Harvard Graduate School of Design, Columbia University, UCLA University of California and Yale School of Architecture. From 2003-2012 he was a Vice-Rector and Head of the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Wolf D. Prix is counted among the originators of the deconstructivist architecture movement. COOP HIMMELB(L)AU had its international breakthrough with the invitation to the exhibition „Deconstructivist Architecture“ at MoMA New York in 1988.

Over the years Wolf D. Prix/ COOP HIMMELB(L)AU was awarded with numerous international architecture awards, including the Great Austrian State Award and the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art. He is permanent member of the Austrian Art Senate and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts as well as chairman of the Curia for Art since autumn 2014. The work of Wolf D. Prix has employed advances in technology as it has been published in numerous books and featured in many museums and collections worldwide. COOP HIMMELB(L)AU’s more recent projects include The Busan Cinema Center, Musée des Confluences, Martin Luther Church, the Open Parliament of Albania, Dalian International Conference Center, PANEUM Expo Center or Cape 10 housing in Vienna, Austria. In 2006, he was the commissioner for the Austrian contribution for the 10th International Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

Two Universities have conferred him the Doctorate Honoris Causa: The Universidad de Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2001) and the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest, Romania (2014). In 2015 he was awarded an Honorary Diploma of the Architectural Association of London.

Serial number certificate 006

Christos joined Zaha Hadid Architects as a senior designer in February 1998. Now a director, he is responsible for leading a wide range of key projects and competitions within the practice.

Involved in many of the practice’s seminal projects such as the Rosenthal Centre for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati; the MAXXI: National Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome; and the Sheikh Zayed Bridge in Abu Dhabi, he led the design of the Phaeno Science Centre project in Wolfsburg, Germany, which was shortlisted for the Stirling prize in 2006.

Christos is currently project director for the recently completed Opus in Dubai, UAE, as well as Sverdlovsk Philharmonic Concert Hall in Yekaterinburg, Russia and the Sberbank Technopark in Moscow, Russia; a 262,000m2 new complex that forms part of the wider Skolkovo campus considered to be a new ‘Russian Silicon Valley’, and will accommodate up to 12,000 people across the IT and marketing departments. As project director, Christos is also leading a number of ZHA’s major masterplan projects, including Admiral Serebryakov Embankment in Novorosky, Russia; Rublyovo-Arkhangelskoye Smart City, Russia; Kartal Pendik Masterplan in Istanbul, Turkey; and Eleftheria Square in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Serial number certificate 007