FOA因离婚散伙

Award-winning practice set to cease trading once current schemes are complete

Award-winning practice Foreign Office Architects is to be dissolved because its husband and wife co-founders are splitting up.

The firm was set up in 1995 by Spaniard Alejandro Zaera-Polo and his Iranian-born wife Farshid Moussavi, who met while both were working at Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture.

In the 14 years since, the company, based in the Shoreditch area of London, has gone on to win a number of RIBA prizes and the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale Award.

The project that put the firm on the map was the Yokohama International Port Terminal in Japan which was completed in 2002 and won the Enric Miralles Prize for architecture in 2004.

Among its current projects are the new Ravensbourne College scheme in the shadow of the O2 Arena in Greenwich and the overhaul of Birmingham New Street station for Network Rail, as well as buildings in Europe, Korea and Malaysia.

BD understands that Zaera-Polo and Moussavi have decided to end their marriage after more than 10 years together.

As a result, the practice, which employs just over 30 people, will cease trading once current schemes are wrapped up.

Details of the impending divorce are still being worked out but it is understood that, as the only partners at the practice, neither of the pair is willing to sell their stake to the other.

Instead, both are likely to set up rival practices in the UK as well as continue their teaching careers. Zaera-Polo is a visiting professor of architecture at Yale and Princeton universities while Moussavi is a professor of architecture at another Ivy League college, Harvard.

It is believed that key staff at the practice have been told of the situation, with the pair now expected to choose individuals from FOA staff for their proposed new firms.

“I expect a number to go with him and a number with her,” one source said.

“Ultimately clients will do the same. They’re both independent people who have their own clients. The business will be wound down in due course, but I’m sure both will move on and be successful.”

Neither Zaera-Polo nor Moussavi were available for comment, but the pair are talking to lawyers about how to sort out remaining company issues. These include finishing contracts off and working out who takes over responsibility for indemnities on schemes.

Ravensbourne College principal Robin Baker said he was unaware that FOA was splitting up but added: “The design is pretty well finished. They’ve been very good and it’s going to be an interesting building.”

Other clients in the firm’s 14- year history have included the Olympic Delivery Authority, the BBC and Land Securities. It also designed the John Lewis department store and cineplex scheme in Leicester, which was completed last year.

The Guardian’s architecture critic, Jonathan Glancey, said: “Yokohama showed you can bring landscaping into the city. They started to generate an innovative architecture that wasn’t flashy. They were able to put into practice what they preached. This news is a real shame.”