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Simon Unwin

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Simon Unwin
Born1952 (age 71–72)
Yorkshire, England
NationalityBritish
Education
Occupation(s)Architect and writer
Organizations
Websitesimonunwin.com

Simon Unwin (born 1952) is a British architect and writer.

Life

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He was born in 1952 in Yorkshire, but grew up in Wales.[1]

He studied at the Chelsea School of Art in London and the Welsh School of Architecture in Cardiff. From the Welsh School of Architecture, he obtained a PhD, and he went on to become a senior lecturer there.[1]

From 2004 to 2009, he was Professor of Architecture at the University of Dundee,[2] where he is now an emeritus professor.[3][4]

He currently resides in Cardiff.[2]

Work

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Unwin has written several books about architecture:

  • An Architecture Notebook: Wall (2000) ISBN 0415228735
  • Doorway (2007) ISBN 9780415458818
  • Exercises in Architecture: Learning to Think as an Architect (2012) ISBN 9781136486623
  • Analysing Architecture (fourth edition, 2014) ISBN 9781317810940
  • Twenty-Five Buildings Every Architect Should Understand (2015; first published in 2010 as Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand) ISBN 9781317555025
  • The Ten Most Influential Buildings in History: Architecture's Archetypes (2016) ISBN 9781317483243
  • Children as Place-makers: The Innate Architect in All of Us (2019) ISBN 9781138046009
  • Curve: Possibilities and Problems with Deviating from the Straight in Architecture (2019) ISBN 9781138045941
  • Metaphor: An Exploration of the Metaphorical Dimensions and Potential of Architecture (2019) ISBN 9781138045439

In Twenty-Five Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, he analyses the following buildings:

Number Name Architect Year Description
1 Casa del Ojo de Agua Ada Dewes and Sergio Puente 1985–90 A house in the Mexican jungle
2 Neuendorf House John Pawson and Claudio Silvestrin 1987–89 A holiday home on the island of Mallorca
3 Barcelona Pavilion Mies van der Rohe 1929 Built as the German Pavilion at the Barcelona Universal Exposition
4 Truss Wall House Kathryn Findlay and Eisaku Ushida 1993 A house in the Tsurukawa suburb of Machida-City, Japan
5 Endless House Friedrich/Frederick Kiesler 1947–61 An unbuilt project for a house based in infinity
6 Farnsworth House Mies van der Rohe 1950 (designed c.1945) On the banks of Fox River near Plano, Illinois, US
7 La Congiunta Peter Märkli 1992 A gallery for the sculpture of Hans Josephsohn, Giornico, Switzerland
8 Un Cabanon Le Corbusier 1952 An architect's vacation cabin at Cap Martin, on the south coast of France
9 Esherick House Louis Kahn 1959–61 A house in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
10 Maison à Bordeaux Rem Koolhaas 1998 A house for a man confined to a wheelchair
11 Danteum Giuseppe Terragni 1938 An unbuilt memorial to Dante Alighieri, intended for Mussolini's Rome
12 Fallingwater Frank Lloyd Wright 1933–36 The house over a water fall in rural Pennsylvania
13 Villa Savoye Le Corbusier 1929 A house in the Poissy suburb of Paris, France
14 Kempsey Guest Studio Glenn Murcutt 1992 A converted shed in New South Wales, Australia
15 Condominium One, The Sea Ranch Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull, Whitaker 1965 A settlement of ten residential units on California's north coast
16 Villa E.1027 Eileen Gray (and Jean Badovici) 1926–29 An architect's vacation house at Cap Martin, on the south coast of France
17 Church of St Petri Sigurd Lewerentz 1963–66 A Lutheran church in the southern Swedish town of Klippan
18 Villa Busk Sverre Fehn 1987–90 A musician's house south of Oslo, Norway
19 Villa Mairea Alvar Aalto 1937–39 A house in the woods of western Finland
20 Thermal Baths, Vals Peter Zumthor 1996 A bathing complex attached to a hotel in a Swiss valley
21 Ramesh House Liza Raju Subhadra (R.S. Liza) 2003 An environmentally responsive house in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
22 Bardi House Lina Bo Bardi 1949–52 A house in its own patch of rainforest on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil
23 Vitra Fire Station Zaha Hadid 1990–93 A fire station for a furniture factory estate in north Switzerland
24 Mohrmann House Hans Scharoun 1939 A family house in the Lichtenrade suburb of Berlin, designed to subvert political restrictions
25 Bioscleave House Madeline Gins and Arakawa 2008 A house extension in East Hampton, New York, designed to subvert relationships with setting to counter mortal degeneration

References

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  1. ^ a b Analysing Architecture (third edition, 2009)
  2. ^ a b simonunwin.com
  3. ^ "Room with a view of nature". The Hindu. 3 March 2017. Retrieved 20 June 2019.
  4. ^ "Materials Architecture Design Environment (MADE)". Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University. Retrieved 20 June 2019.