Cecil Balmond
Cecil Balmond was born in Sri Lanka, where he trained as a civil engineer. In 1968 he joined ARUP in London. He founded the Advanced Geometry Unit AGU) in 2000, where he now works with scientists, architects and engineers to pursue his interest in the genesis of form using numbers, music and mathematics as vital sources.
At the end of the 1980s, Balmond started collaborating with a number of pace-setting architects including Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Arata Isozaki, Toyo Ito and Alvaro Siza. Collaborations with Kappor include the breathtaking space sculpture ‘Marsyas’ at Tate Modern, London (2002). In 2006, AGU completed The Pedro and Ines Footbridge in Coimbra, Portugal. The widely published bridge has an unprecedented structure that allows for the poetic pacing of pedestrian passage across a river.
It encapsulates the magical, unpredictable and animated quality Balmond seeks in all AGU projects, whether collaborative or not. Projects currently under construction include the Centre Pompidou, Metz with Shigeru Ban (2009) and the CCTV New Headquarters, Beijing with OMA (2009).
Cecil Balmond is the author of ‘No. 9’ (1998), and 'Informal’ (2002) which has won The Banister Fletcher Prize for best book on architecture. Last year saw Prestel's publication of Balmond's latest book ‘Element’ and a major exhibition of his work at The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. Balmond's art piece ‘H-Edge’ originally created for a solo-show for Artists Space New York (2006) will be the focus of an exhibition later this year at The Graham Foundation in Chicago.