Farshid Moussavi

Moussavi was born in 1965 in Shiraz, Iran. She immigrated to London in 1979 to attend boarding school. She trained in architecture at the Dundee School of Architecture, University of Dundee, in Scotland, the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London and graduated with a Masters in Architecture (MArch II) from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD).

Moussavi first came to prominence with Foreign Office Architects (FOA), the practice she co-founded in 1993 with Alejandro Zaera-Polo. At FOA, Moussavi co-authored the design for the award-winning Yokohama International Ferry Terminal in Japan (which was subject to an international design competition in 1995) and was part of the United Architects team who were finalists in the Ground Zero competition. She also completed a wide range of international projects including the John Lewis complex in Leicester, England, the Meydan retail complex in Istanbul, Turkey, Carabanchel Social Housing in Madrid, and the South-East Coastal Park in Barcelona, Spain.

In June 2011, after splitting with Zaera-Polo, Moussavi re-established her own London-based practice, Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA). Her notable projects with FMA include the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, The Ismaili Center, Houston, in the US, Victoria Beckham's Flagship Store in London, a multi-storey and multi-tenure affordable residential block in the La Défense-Nanterre district of Paris, the Folie Divine residential tower in Montpellier, and the Harrods Toys Department in London. The practice is currently working on a number of high-profile projects including an elementary school in the Saclay district of Paris, a mixed-use block in Montpellier, and a flagship store in Shanghai.