Now, tomorrow, and everything else

Hernan Diaz Alonso and Tom Wiscombe
in dialogue “Now, tomorrow, and everything else”
Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 10am
Urban Strategies Studio
Vordere Zollamtstraße 3
1030 Wien

HERNAN DIAZ ALONSO

Principal and founder of the Los Angeles-based design practice Xefirotarch.

Considered one of the most influential voices of his generation, before becoming the Graduate Programs Chair at SCI-Arc Diaz Alonso has served for the past several years as Distinguish Professor of Architecture and the Graduate Thesis Coordinator at SCI-Arc. Previously, he has taught as a design studio professor at Columbia University GSAPP and teaches at the Urban Strategies Postgraduate Program at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria. He was recently honored by Yale University with the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professorship of Architectural Design for fall 2010, he will be the Eero Saarinen Professor of Architectural Design in the spring 2015 and by the American Institute of Architects as the Educator of the year in 2012.

Diaz Alonso has lectured extensively at major institutions around the world, and his work has been include in numerous times at the Venice Architecture Biennale, London Architecture Biennale, Archilab,

His architecture designs have received numerous awards and have been displayed in both architecture and art museum exhibitions, such as New York MoMa, San Francisco MoMa, Art Institute of Chicago, Artist Space in New York. His work has been widely published in magazines and periodicals worldwide and multiple books, including the “Excessive” monograph and an upcoming monograph by Thames and Hudson.

In 2005, Diaz Alonso was the winner of PS1 MoMa’s Young Architects Program (YAP) competition. His work has since been the subject of solo shows at the San Francisco MoMa in 2006, the Art Institute of Chicago and the MAK Centre, Wien in 2007 and currently his office is building the Center of Experience and Media for Boeing in Seattle USA.

His work is part of the permanent collections of the FRAC Center, the San Francisco MoMa, New York MoMa, Thyssen Bornamiza Collection in Vienna, MAK Museum in Vienna and the Art Institute of Chicago.

TOM WISCOMBE

Born in La Jolla, California in 1970, Tom Wiscombe, AIA is a registered Architect living in Los Angeles. He is founder and principal of Tom Wiscombe Architecture, an internationally recognized design practice. His work stands out in terms of its synthesis of form, pattern, color, and technology into singular, irreducible constructions.

Wiscombe has developed an international reputation through winning competition entries, exhibitions of work at major cultural institutions, and publications worldwide. Wiscombe recently won second place in the international competition for the Kinmen Passenger Service Center, Taiwan. In 2014, Wiscombe began planning and design of the Old Bank District Museum (OBDM) with Gilmore Associates, the developer known for re-vitalizing downtown Los Angeles. In 2012, Wiscombe, was part of the joint design team organized by Morphosis to compete for the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, which received second prize. In 2011, Wiscombe won first place in two competitions for the 2013 Chinese National Games, including a 123,000 square meter Civic Sports Center and a 5,000 seat Judo Arena in Shenyang. In 2011, Wiscombe was also hired to design the Beijing National Hotel by the Interior Ministry of China, which features 1,500 rooms and a 10,000 square meter internal rainforest.

His work is part of the permanent collection of the FRAC Centre Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA San Francisco, and MoMA New York. ICON Magazine, in its May 2009 issue, named Wiscombe one of the “top 20 architects in the world who are making the future and transforming the way we work”.

Wiscombe is a senior faculty member at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He teaches design in the M.Arch. II and ESTm programs and is Applied Studies Coordinator, in charge of curriculum building and faculty recruitment. Wiscombe also currently teaches Advanced Research studios as Visiting Professor at PennDesign. In the Fall of 2012, Wiscombe held the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professorship at Yale University.

Previously, Wiscombe worked for Coop Himmelb(l)au, where he was the right hand of Principal Wolf D. Prix for over 10 years. He was responsible for multiple international projects and large project teams from competition through realization. Notably, he was Chief Designer for the UFA Cinema Center, Dresden, BMW Welt, Munich, and the Musée des Confluences, Lyon, known as three of the most important works of contemporary architecture.

Tom began his career as an intern at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, where his father is Chief Scientist.