Professor Alexander Tzonis is professor emeritus and held the chair of Architectural Theory and Design Methods at the University of Technology of Delft; he is Director of Design Knowledge Systems, a multi-disciplinary research centre on Architectural Cognition.

He was educated at Yale University and taught at Harvard University between 1967 and 1981. He has held visiting professorships at MIT, Columbia University, the Universities of Montreal, Strasbourg, Singapore, University of Technology Vienna, the Technion, Israel, and the College de France.

Among his publications are The Shape of Community (Penguin, 1972) with Serge Chermayeff and Towards a non-oppressive Environment (MIT Press, 1972, published in six languages including Japanese). Classical Architecture (MIT Press, 1986; fifth printing 1990, published in six languages including Japanese and Korean) and The Roots of Modern Architecture (SUN, 1984; second edition, 1990) both co-authored with Liane Lefaivre. He has contributed over two hundred articles on architectural theory, history and design methods. Other books by Alexander Tzonis: Architecture in Europe since 1968, Between Memory and Invention (Thames & Hudson, Fall, 1992 (GB), Rizolli (US) and Campus (Germany) was written with L. Lefaivre, the first comprehensive presentation of two and a half decades of architectural production, received an American Institute of Architects Award (1994). In collaboration with Ian White, is Automation Based Creative Design (Elsevier, 1994). Architecture in North America since 1960 (Thames & Hudson, Little, Brown, 1995) in collaboration with L. Lefaivre and R. Diamond, and Movement and Structure, the Work of Santiago Calatrava, (Birkhauser, 1995) also with L. Lefaivre. Santiago Calatrava, The Poetics of Movement (Universe, Thames and Hudson, 1999) and Aldo van Eyck, Humanist Rebel (010, 1999) also with L. Lefaivre. Santiago Calatrava, The Creative Process (Birkhauser, 2001), Tropical Architecture, A Global Regionalism (Wiley 2001) co-edited with Liane Lefaivre, with a preface by H. R. H. Prince Claus of the Netherlands, and Le Corbusier (Universe (USA), Thames & Hudson (UK), Rizolli (IT) Hazan(Fr), 2001), Critical Regionalism, Architecture and Identity in a Globalised World (Prestel 2003, and Emergence of Modern Architecture: A Documentary History, from 1000 to 1800 (Routledge 2004) both co-authored with Liane Lefaivre and Santiago Calatrava, Complete Works Rizzoli 2004, (translated in Italian, Spanish, and Chinese) and with P Giannisi, Classical Greek Architecture, the Construction of the Modern, Flammarion.2004, (English, French, and German editions). His latest books are Santiago Calatrava’s Bridges, co-author Rebeca Caso Donadei, and Santiago Calatrava’s the Athens Olympics both published by Rizzoli 2005.

Early in his career, he worked in the theatre and the movies and was art director of the film Never on Sunday. In 1990 he published his first novel, a murder story about problem solving, computation and morality, Hermes and the Golden Thinking Machine (MIT/Bradford Press).

Prof. Tzonis has been General Editor of the Penguin Books series of The Man-made Environment, and of the Garland Architectural Archives which has published the complete archives: of Le Corbusier (32 volumes), L. Kahn (7 volumes), a Choice Outstanding Academic Book, Mies van der Rohe (18 volumes), W. Gropius (4 volumes), Schindler (4 volumes), H. Sauvage (2 volumes). American Institute of Architects Book Award, A Aalto (12 volumes).

He has headed the organisation of several major international conferences among them: Automation Based Creative Design Education, May 1992 (a 150th Anniversary of TU Delft Conference). The Spiritual in Architecture, a Symposium dedicated to the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin by Daniel Libeskind April 12 2000, hosted by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, under the auspices of the Royal Palace Foundation. The Mediterranean Landscape, Representation Designs and Identity, (Van Leer Foundation, Mishkenot Sha’ananim), December 1997, Jerusalem, The Mediterranean City, (Mishkenot Sha’ananim), May 2002, Jerusalem,.

Delft University of Technology
Faculty of Architecture
Design Knowledge Systems Research Centre
e-mail. a.tzonis@bk.tudelft.nl
http://www.tzonis.com

108 OUDE DELFT, DELFT, 2611 CE, NETHERLANDS