Mark Antony Wigley (born 1956) is a New Zealand-born architect and author based in the United States. From 2004 to 2014, he was the Dean of Columbia University's

Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) is the Architecture school in the United States, architecture school of Columbia University, a Private university, private research university in New York City. It is also ...

Career

Wigley received both his Bachelor of Architecture (1979) and Ph.D. (1987) from the

University of Auckland The University of Auckland (; Māori: ''Waipapa Taumata Rau'') is a public research university based in Auckland, New Zealand. The institution was established in 1883 as a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. Initially loc ...

, New Zealand. Mike Austin was his doctoral supervisor. Wigley left

Auckland Auckland ( ; ) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. It has an urban population of about It is located in the greater Auckland Region, the area governed by Auckland Council, which includes outlying rural areas and ...

in 1986 and taught at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, from 1987 to 1999, serving also as the director of Graduate Studies at Princeton’s School of Architecture. In 1988, Wigley co-curated with

Philip Johnson Philip Cortelyou Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005) was an American architect who designed modern and postmodern architecture. Among his best-known designs are his modernist Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut; the postmodern 550 ...

the

MoMA The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

exhibition ''Deconstructivist Architecture''. The exhibition featured the works of seven architects, who were already well-known at the time for a style of architecture that involved in various ways "deconstructing" conventional notions of architectural convention:

Frank Gehry Frank Owen Gehry ( ; ; born February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become attractions. Gehry rose to prominence in th ...

Zaha Hadid Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid ( ''Zahā Ḥadīd''; 31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016) was an Iraqi-born British architect, artist, and designer. She is recognised as a key figure in the architecture of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Born ...

Peter Eisenman Peter David Eisenman (born August 11, 1932) is an American architect, writer, and professor. Considered one of the New York Five, Eisenman is known for his high modernist and deconstructive designs, as well as for his authorship of several archi ...

Daniel Libeskind Daniel Libeskind (born May 12, 1946) is a Polish–American architect, artist, professor and set designer. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect. He is known for the design a ...

, Bernard Tschumi,

Rem Koolhaas Remment Lucas Koolhaas (; born 17 November 1944) is a Dutch architect, architectural theory, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Graduate School of ...

and

Coop Himmelb(l)au Coop Himmelb(l)au (a pun meaning '' Coop Sky Building'' and ''Coop Sky Blue'') is an architecture, urban planning, design and art firm founded in 1968 by Wolf D. Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky and Michael Holzer in Vienna, Austria. History Coop Hi ...

. The curators linked the works to the philosophical notion of

Deconstruction In philosophy, deconstruction is a loosely-defined set of approaches to understand the relationship between text and meaning. The concept of deconstruction was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who described it as a turn away from ...

, as espoused by French philosopher

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...

, as well as the art-architectural historical precedent of Russian constructivism, and several works from this period were displayed in the exhibition. However, of the architects involved only Eisenman and Tschumi acknowledged the connection to Derrida and only Hadid and Koolhaas to Constructivism.

Personal life

Mark Wigley is married to architectural historian Beatriz Colomina.

Volume Magazine

In 2005, Wigley founded ''

Volume Magazine VOLUME is a biannual international magazine on architecture and design, published bArchis(a non-profit platform for architecture and beyond) in collaboration with thNieuwe Instituut Conceived as a global platform for architectural ideas, VOLUME ...

'' together with

and Ole Bouman. A collaborative project by Archis (Amsterdam), AMO Rotterdam and C-lab (

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

NY),

is an experimental

think tank A think tank, or public policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governme ...

focusing on the process of spatial and cultural reflexivity. The magazine aims to explore "beyond architecture’s definition of 'making buildings'" by presenting global views on architecture and design, broader attitudes to social structures and created environments; and embodies progressive journalism. Created and founded in collaboration with Brett Steele the Institute of Failure; essentially an academic institution for the instruction and theory of failure (as opposed to success).

Awards

Wigley was awarded the Resident Fellowship,

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

Institute for Architecture and Urbanism, 1989; International Committee of Architectural Critics (C.I.C.A.) Triennial Award for Architectural Criticism, 1990; and the Graham Foundation Grant, 1997.

Exhibitions

*
Deconstructivist Architecture
',

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York, 23 June to 30 August 1988 (with

) *
Constant — New Babylon
',

Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art Witte (and de Witte) are Dutch language, Dutch and Low German surnames meaning "(the) white one". Witte can also be a patronymic surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Alfred Witte (1878–1941), German astrologer * Barbara Witte (192 ...

, Rotterdam, 21 November 1997 to 10 January 1998 *
The American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life
', Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 16 June 1998 to 8 November 1998 (with Beatriz Colomina, Elizabeth Diller, Alessandra Ponte, Ricardo Scofidio, Georges Teyssot, and Mark Wasiuta) *
Another City for Another Life: Constant’s New Babylon
', The Drawing Center, New York, 2 November 1999 to 30 December 1999 *
Laboratories: Six Young Architectural Firms in the CCA Galleries
', Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 18 April 2002 to 15 September 2002 (with Frédéric Migayrou) *
out of the box: price rossi stirling + matta-clark
', Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 23 October 2003 to 6 September 2004 (with Marco de Michelis, Philip Ursprung, Anthony Vidler, Hubertus von Amelunxen, and Mirko Zardini)

Bibliography

*(With Philip Johnson)
Deconstructivist Architecture.
' New York: The Museum of Modern Art; Boston: Little Brown and Company; Distributed by New York Graphic Society Books, 1988. *''The Architecture of

: Derrida's Haunt''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1993. *''White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995. *''Constant's New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire''. Rotterdam: Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, 1998. *(Edited with

Catherine De Zegher Catherine de Zegher (born Marie-Catherine Alma Gladys de Zegher Groningen, April 14, 1955) is a Belgian curator and a modern and contemporary art historian. She has a degree in art history and archaeology from the University of Ghent. From 1988 ...

) ''The Activist Drawing: Retracing Situationist Architectures from Constant's New Babylon to Beyond''. New York: The Drawing Center, 2001. *(With James Graham). ''Cutting Matta-Clark. The Anarchitecture Project''. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers; New York: Columbia University GSAPP, 2014. *''

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more t ...

Inc.: Architecture in the Age of Radio''. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2015. *(With Beatriz Colomina). ''Are We Human? : Notes on an Archaeology of Design''. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2016. *''Cutting Matta-Clark. The Anarchitecture Investigation''. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers; Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture; New York: Columbia University GSAPP, 2018. * '' Konrad Wachsmann's Television: Post-architectural Transmissions'' (Critical Spatial Practice, Band 11), London: Sternberg Press 2020

References

External links

17 September 2006 Hammer Conversation
with Mark Wigley and

Wolfgang Tillmans Wolfgang Tillmans (born 16 August 1968) is a German Fine-art photography, photographer. His diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations. Tillman ...

Columbia University faculty BiographyVolume MagazineInterview Mark Wigley
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wigley, Mark New Zealand architects New Zealand emigrants to the United States American architecture writers American male non-fiction writers New Zealand architecture writers Architectural theoreticians Living people Columbia University faculty Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation faculty Princeton University faculty University of Auckland alumni 1956 births People from Palmerston North