Simon Unwin


Simon Unwin is a British architect and writer.

Life

He was born in 1952 in Yorkshire, but grew up in Wales.
He studied at the Chelsea School of Art in London and the Welsh School of Architecture in Cardiff. From the Welsh School of Architecture, he obtained a PhD, and he went on to become a senior lecturer there.
From 2004 to 2009, he was Professor of Architecture at the University of Dundee, where he is now an Emeritus Professor.
He currently resides in Cardiff.

Work

Unwin has written several books about architecture:
In Twenty-Five Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, he analyses the following buildings:
NumberNameArchitectYearDescription
1Casa del Ojo de AguaAda Dewes and Sergio Puente1985-90A house in the Mexican jungle
2Neuendorf HouseJohn Pawson and Claudio Silvestrin1987-89A holiday home on the island of Mallorca
3Barcelona PavilionMies van der Rohe1929Built as the German Pavilion at the Barcelona Universal Exposition
4Truss Wall HouseKathryn Findlay and Eisaku Ushida1993A house in the Tsurukawa suburb of Machida-City, Japan
5Endless HouseFriedrich/Frederick Kiesler1947-61An unbuilt project for a house based in infinity
6Farnsworth HouseMies van der Rohe1950 On the banks of Fox River near Plano, Illinois, US
7La CongiuntaPeter Märkli1992A gallery for the sculpture of Hans Josephsohn, Giornico, Switzerland
8Un CabanonLe Corbusier1952An architect's vacation cabin at Cap Martin, on the south coast of France
9Esherick HouseLouis Kahn1959-61A house in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
10Maison à BordeauxRem Koolhaas1998A house for a man confined to a wheelchair
11DanteumGiuseppe Terragni1938An unbuilt memorial to Dante Alighieri, intended for Mussolini's Rome
12FallingwaterFrank Lloyd Wright1933-36The house over a water fall in rural Pennsylvania
13Villa SavoyeLe Corbusier1929A house in the Poissy suburb of Paris, France
14Kempsey Guest StudioGlenn Murcutt1992A converted shed in New South Wales, Australia
15Condominium One, The Sea RanchMoore, Lyndon, Turnbull, Whitaker1965A settlement of ten residential units on California's north coast
16Villa E.1027Eileen Gray 1926-29An architect's vacation house at Cap Martin, on the south coast of France
17Church of St PetriSigurd Lewerentz1963-66A Lutheran church in the southern Swedish town of Klippan
18Villa BuskSverre Fehn1987-90A musician's house south of Oslo, Norway
19Villa MaireaAlvar Aalto1937-39A house in the woods of western Finland
20Thermal Baths, ValsPeter Zumthor1996A bathing complex attached to a hotel in a Swiss valley
21Ramesh HouseLiza Raju Subhadra 2003An environmentally responsive house in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
22Bardi HouseLina Bo Bardi1949-52A house in its own patch of rainforest on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil
23Vitra Fire StationZaha Hadid1990-93A fire station for a furniture factory estate in north Switzerland
24Mohrmann HouseHans Scharoun1939A family house in the Lichtenrade suburb of Berlin, designed to subvert political restrictions
25Bioscleave HouseMadeline Gins and Arakawa2008A house extension in East Hampton, New York, designed to subvert relationships with setting to counter mortal degeneration