MEET THE SPEAKER\\ Kar-Hwa Ho, Head of Interior Architecture and Associate Direct Zaha Hadid Architects

Kar-Hwa Ho, Head of Interior Architecture and Associate Direct Zaha Hadid Architects, will give a highly-awaited lecture at SHARE Interiors Bucharest 2024, offering valuable insights into the approach of ZHA

Kar-Hwa Ho is head of Interior Architecture and Associate at the world-renowned office Zaha Hadid Architects, where he impressively oversees the design of all interior projects. He has a remarkable experience in practice and educational background. He first worked with Zaha Hadid Architects, collaborating closely with the studio founder, after finishing his studies at Architectural Association in London, where he obtained his diploma in architecture with honours in 1985. He continued his studies at Harvard University Graduate School in Architecture and obtained his qualification as an architect in New York in 1993. For eleven years, he had been working with Kohn Pederson Fox on projects in US, London, China, Singapore, leading teams in design conception, development and implementation of mixed use, commercial and retail buildings. He then enriched his experience at Louis Vuitton Malletier as a leader in design planning, evolution and execution of Louis Vuitton retail stores in China and the Asia-Pacific region. In 2014 he re-joined Zaha Hadid Architects, becoming head of the Interior Architecture where he skilfully applied all the constructive knowledge gained before and taking it much further through bold, ample and iconic projects.

 

 

Drawing on his extensive expertise in retail, commercial and residential interior design to empower the practice to take on a complete design process from masterplanning, architecture to interior, product and furniture design, Kar-Hwa Ho consolidated the importance of his role in the big team of ZHA. Moreover, the wide publishing of the works he has been involved in, as well as the numerous accolades his projects received (in particular the residential interior ones) prove his valuable input and proficiency. The consistent position of leadership, the wide-spanning professional experience strengthened by working in different contexts all around the world makes his contribution extremely valuable and shows a global way of thinking architecture, in which the interior(design) and exterior (architecture and its context) are in a constant and fruitful dialogue. In this sense, Kar-Hwa Ho states that “it is just this whole idea of research, pushing these boundaries, and there is no divide between the inside and the outside because quite often the geometry of one informs the other and the space of the outside flows into the inside. It is like one immersive space.” 

 

 

The current activity Kar-Hwa Ho at Zaha Hadid Architects cannot be, though, presented without mentioning the collaboration with the founder of the office herself, architect Zaha Hadid who was also his professor in the years he spent growing at Architectural Association in London. In this formative period for him, he worked closely with her on a number of competition and architectural projects. 

Today, the office Zaha Hadid Architects need no introduction, the name itself has built-in all the superlatives, probably being the widest known architectural contemporary practice in the world.