Patrik Schumacher

Patrik Schumacher (b. 1961, Bonn, Germany) is principal of Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) and has led the practice since Zaha Hadid’s passing. Patrik joined ZHA in 1988 and was seminal in developing Zaha Hadid Architects into a renowned global architecture and design brand with 400 staff in 5 offices around the world.

Patrik studied philosophy, mathematics and architecture in Bonn, Stuttgart and London and received his Diploma in Architecture in 1990. He has been a partner at ZHA since 2003 and was co-author of all projects including the MAXXI: Italian Museum of 21st Century Art in Rome and Evelyn Grace Academy in London, projects awarded the 2010 and 2011 Stirling Prize respectively by the Royal Institute of British Architecture for excellence in architecture. Patrik is an academician of the Berlin Academy of Arts.

In 1996, he founded the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association in London where he continues to teach. In 1999 he also completed his PHD at the Institute for Cultural Science, Klagenfurt University. Patrik lectures around the world and recently held the John Portman Chair in Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Patrik has contributed over 100 articles to architectural journals and anthologies.

In 2008, he coined the phrase Parametricism and has since published a series of manifestos promoting Parametricism as the new epochal style for the 21st century. In 2010/2012 he published his two-volume theoretical opus magnum “The Autopoiesis of Architecture”. Patrik is widely recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders within the fields of architecture, urbanism and design.

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Bow and Rise are the latest results of the extensive, ongoing research that ZHA is conducting within the domains of 3D printing and material experimentation. These chairs combine pristine design informed by structural optimisation processes typically found in nature with innovative materials and the most advanced fabrication methods.

The pattern and the colour gradient of both pieces concur in rede ning the traditional spatial relationship between furniture and its setting. Bow and Rise have been printed with a pellet-extruder employing raw plastic particles rather than a lament. The chosen plastic is PLA, a non-toxic, biodegradable material from renewable sources such as corn-starch, which ensure lightness and stability.

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