Nigel Coates (born 1949 in Malvern) is an English

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

Early life and education

He grew up in the town of

Malvern, Worcestershire Malvern (, locally also: ) is a spa town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in Worcestershire, England. It lies at the foot of the Malvern Hills, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The centre of Malvern, Great Malvern, is ...

and was educated at

Hanley Castle Grammar School Hanley is one of the six towns that, along with Burslem, Longton, Fenton, Tunstall and Stoke-upon-Trent, amalgamated to form the City of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. The town is the main business, commercial and cultural hub o ...

before studying at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

(1968–71) and the

Architectural Association The Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, commonly referred to as the AA, is the oldest private school of architecture in the UK. The AA hosts exhibitions, lectures, symposia and publications. History The Architectura ...

(1972–74). In 1985 he formed Branson Coates Architecture with Doug Branson before establishing his own studio of architecture and design in 2006.

Architectural career

Coates' has designed buildings such as the Caffè Bongo (1986), Noah’s Ark (1988), The Wall (1990) and the Art Silo (1992), all in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, the Geffrye Museum extension, Oyster House, Powerhouse::uk (all 1998), and the

National Centre for Popular Music The National Centre for Popular Music was a museum in Sheffield, England, for pop and rock music Rock is a Music genre, genre of popular music that originated in the United States as "rock and roll" in the late 1940s and early 1950s, deve ...

(now the Sheffield Hallam Hubs music venue) in Sheffield (1999). His work is one of the most well known examples of the NATO ( Narrative Architecture Today) movement.

Exhibitions and interiors

His work is held in several museum collections including the

Victoria & Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

London, FRAC Orléans, and the

Museum for Architectural Drawing The Museum for Architectural Drawing () is a private museum in Berlin, Germany run by the Tchoban Foundation. It was opened in June 2013. Three to four exhibitions are shown each year, made up of drawings from the Tchoban Foundation’s collectio ...

Berlin, including drawings of projects such as the House for

Derek Jarman Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman (31 January 1942 – 19 February 1994) was an English artist, film maker, costume designer, stage designer, writer, poet, gardener, and gay rights activist. Biography Jarman was born at the Royal Victoria Nursing ...

and the Tokyo Wall. Coates has designed several shops for fashion designer

Katharine Hamnett Katharine Eleanor Hamnett (née Appleton; born 16 August 1947) is an English fashion designer best known for her political T-shirts. Early life Hamnett was born on 16 August 1947 in Gravesend, Kent, the daughter of James Appleton, a group ca ...

, the Living Bridges exhibition at the

Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

(1996), the British Pavilion at Expo '98 in Lisbon, the Body Zone at London's

Millennium Dome The Millennium Dome was the original name of the large dome-shaped building on the Greenwich Peninsula in South East (London sub region), South East London, England, which housed a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millen ...

, the Jigsaw flagship store on

Knightsbridge Knightsbridge is a residential and retail district in central London, south of Hyde Park, London, Hyde Park. It is identified in the London Plan as one of two international retail centres in London, alongside the West End of London, West End. ...

, Ecstacity in the British Pavilion at the 2000 Venice Architecture Biennale, Mixtacity (part of the Global Cities exhibition) at

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...

in 2007, his Hypnerotosphere installation at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale (a collaboration with film maker John Maybury), the 2009 refurbishment of Middle and Over Wallop restaurants at

Glyndebourne Glyndebourne () is an English country house, the site of an opera house that, since 1934, has been the venue for the annual Glyndebourne Festival Opera. The house, located near Lewes in East Sussex, England, is thought to be about six hundre ...

Opera House and the installation 'Picaresque', part of the 2012 exhibition ''Kama: Sesso e Design'' at the

Triennale di Milano The Triennale di Milano is a museum of art and design in the Parco Sempione in Milan, in Lombardy in northern Italy. It is housed in the , built between 1931 and 1933 to designs by Giovanni Muzio and financed by Antonio Bernocchi and his ...

Academic career

He was Unit Master at the

from 1978 to 1988. From 1995 to 2011 he was Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...

and in 2011 was made Emeritus Professor. In 2012 Nigel Coates was awarded the

RIBA ''Riba'' (, or , ) is an Arabic word used in Islamic law and roughly translated as " usury": unjust, exploitative gains made in trade or business. ''Riba'' is mentioned and condemned in several different verses in the Qur'an3:130

Annie Spink Award in recognition of an outstanding contribution to architectural education. He is Chair of the Academic Court at the London School of Architecture.

Related publications

*Nigel Coates, Narrative Break Up, ed. Nigel Coates and Bernard Tschumi, The Discourse of Events, AA Publications, 1983 *Nigel Coates ed., NATØ magazines Nos. 1 Albion, 1983; 2 Apprentice, 1984; 3 Gamma City, 1985, all AA Publications *Nigel Coates, Street Signs, ed. John Thackara, Design After Modernism, Thames & Hudson, 1988 *Rick Poynor, Nigel Coates: The City in Motion, Fourth Estate, 1989 *Metropolis, Linda Brown and Deyan Sudjic, ICA 1988 *Nigel Coates, Ecstacity, AA Publications, 1992 *Jonathan Glancey, Body Buildings and City Scapes, Thames & Hudson, 1999 *Nigel Coates, Guide to Ecstacity, Laurence King, 2003 *Nigel Coates, Collidoscope, Laurence King 2004 *Alessandra Orlandi, Interview with Nigel Coates, The Plan 006, 2004 *Jenny Dalton, Coates of many Colours, How To Spend It, Financial Times, April 2009 *Aaron Betsky, Out There: Architecture Beyond Buildings, La Biennale di Venezia, 2008 *Guido Incerti, Interview with Nigel Coates, Klat magazine 05, Spring 2011 *Nigel Coates, Narrative Architecture, Wiley, 2012 *Kama: Sesso e Design, catalogue ed. Silvana Annicchiarico, Triennale Design Museum, 2012 *Marjanović and Howard, Drawing Ambience, RISD 2015 *Claire Jamieson: NATØ: Narrative Architecture in Postmodern London, Routledge, 2017

References

External links

Nigel Coates websiteLondon School of Architecture websitePortrait of the artist: Nigel Coates, architect
interview in

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

Nigel Coates profile on ArchitonicNigel Coates on Pamono e-commerceNigel Coates interviewed on Crane TVNigel Coates
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coates, Nigel Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Architects from Worcestershire English furniture designers People educated at Hanley Castle High School Alumni of the Architectural Association School of Architecture 1949 births