ARCHITECTURE and URBANISM

3350 Glendale Boulevard
Los Angeles, California, 90039
323-661-4000
info@bouwmanzago.com

@ofmarginalinterest
@zagoarch
@studiotecnico.la




Led by partners Laura Bouwman and Andrew Zago, Bouwman Zago brings open-ended, creative inquiry to disciplinary concerns in architecture. Noted for its prescient articulation of emerging sensibilities, the practice weds quasi-autonomous aesthetic studies to the art of making buildings and cities. In doing so, Bouwman Zago reaffirms the substantial and productive link amongst art, architecture and urbanism. The firm has completed projects in the US, Mexico, and Korea including the Fine Venture office tower in Seoul, the Cornell Synthesis Studio for Cornell University’s Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). In 2011 Zago Architecture was selected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for its Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream exhibition. In 2015 Andrew Zago and Laura Bouwman were selected to represent the United States at the US Pavilion for the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2018, the firm was selected to design a housing prototype for a rural house for Nanacamilpa, Mexico. This prototype was built this year as part of a housing exposition in Apan, Mexico. In 2021, Laura Bouwman and Andrew Zago were named Visiting Baumer Professors at the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University. Their work will be the subject of an upcoming book published by the school.  In 2021, Laura Bouwman and Andrew Zago founded STUDIO TECNICO.

Andrew Zago, principal of Bouwman Zago, has over thirty years of professional experience in architecture, urbanism, and education. He is a native of Detroit, holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University.  In 1987 he founded AKS RUNO in Los Angeles with Bahram Shirdel and later, Shirdel Zago Kipnis with Bahram Shirdel and Jeffrey Kipnis. In 1991 he established Zago Architecture—Bouwman Zago’s predecessor firm. Zago is a member of the design faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI- Arc) and Clinical Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at Harvard University, Cornell University, the University of Michigan, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the Ohio State University. From 2003 to 2007 he was the founding director of the Master of Architecture program at the City College of New York. He frequently lectures, and his work has been exhibited internationally. In 2018 he published Accident, the first book of his planned Polygraph series of mismatched publications documenting the breadth of his creative output. Zago is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome and a recipient of both an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Fellowship Grant from the United States Artists organization.

Laura Bouwman is a principal of Bouwman Zago where she has worked with Andrew Zago since 2003. She is a native of Detroit, holds a Bachelor of Science in Art and Design and a Master of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to Zago Architecture, she worked in the Paris office of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop on the Morgan Library Expansion in New York. She is a registered architect in California and Michigan. Ms. Bouwman was project architect for the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Mercury Coffee Bar Detroit, Arup Downtown Los Angeles, and has had a leadership role in other projects, publications, and design competitions. Ms. Bouwman has also taught design studios at the Ohio State University, University of California Berkeley, and the University of Michigan.