Matteo Cainer
Architect Paris / France
Matteo Cainer is a practicing architect, critic and curator. Based between London and Paris, he is the Principal of Matteo Cainer Architects, curator of Architecture Whispers, a cross-cultural series on the making of contemporary architecture and founder of the Confluence School in Lyon. A graduate of the University of Architecture in Venice, he worked and collaborated with a number of international practices including Eisenman Architects in New York City, Coop Himmelb(l)au in Vienna, and Arata Isozaki Associati in Milan. In 2004, he worked with Kurt W. Forster as Vice Director of the 9th International Venice Architecture Biennale: METAMORPH and in 2006 he curated the London Architecture Biennale: Change. In 2010 he conceived and directed the ‘Pavillon Speciale’, an annual spring architectural series, where young emerging architects design and build a temporary installation in central Paris. In 2013 he conceived ‘Architectural Whispers’ in Paris, an informal venue where architects, artists and critics discuss and develop ideas that arise from their work. Cainer has always been active in academia, as a visiting critic at the Bartlett School of Architecture, the Architectural Association in London, and at the Dessau Institute of Architecture in Germany. Associate studio Professor at the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris from 2009-2013, and in 2013 conceives and founds the Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative strategies in Architecture in Lyon, which he chairs and co-directs until July 2015. His writings have been featured in numerous publications, and his studio was selected as one of the 25 significant emerging international practices at the London Architecture Festival. With a philosophy that embraces technology, art and design, the studio has developed an architecture that is designed to challenge and evolve.
