ABOUT US
Andrew Todd
Kibo Hagino
Andrew Todd studied English at Cambridge where he was director of the touring European Theatre Group. He qualified as an architect in 1995 at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied with Ivan Illich, Joseph Rykwert and David Leatherbarrow. Upon graduating he moved to Paris where he gained professional experience in Jean Nouvel’s office; at the same time he was a correspondent for Giancarlo de Carlo’s review Space and Society. In 1996 he met the director Peter Brook, who invited him to collaborate on a research project which became the book The Open Circle – Peter Brook’s Theatre Environments (published by faber and faber in 2003).
Studio Andrew Todd, under his direction, has developed a reputation as one of Europe’s leading young architectural firms (winning the prestigious Europe 40 under 40 prize in 2009). It has focused primarily on spaces for the performing arts, designing and building for clients such as the Old and Young Vic Theatres, Aberystwyth University, University of Sussex, Lausanne Opera, Molde Teatre Vert (in Norway), the Royal Festival Hall and the municipalities of Marseille, La Ciotat and Ris Orangis. The firm’s Hardelot Theatre -completing in February 2016- will be the world’s first curved all-CLT building, the first naturally-ventilated cultural facility in France and the first French building to incorporate 12-metre bamboo stalks imported from Indonesia. Andrew was named Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in 2011.
Kibo Hagino studied at Tokyo University and the University of Pennsylvania, the former in the studio of Hisao Kohyama. After practicing with Kohyama and Fumihiko Maki he obtained a Ph.D on the topic of Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia campus. Originally from Tokyo, he chose to establish his practice near Wajima in the Noto peninsula, where he is deeply involved in rural life, leading a group of local farming and academic collaborators in a government-supported programme promoting biodiversity at a very local scale. In this context he has revivified and developed local devotional traditions related to nature.
His practice has completed office, restaurant and housing projects in Tokyo, Osaka and Noto. In the latter case a major earthquake in 2007 caused him to become deeply implicated in the restoration of traditional buildings using techniques of bamboo-reinforced plaster and earth walls. He is an acknowledged master of these techniques, seeking to apply them also in contemporary projects.