Frank Barkow & Regine Leibinger: Let's Talk

Gensler Visiting Critic Lecture

Barkow Leibinger is an American/German architectural practice based in Berlin and New York, founded in 1993 by Frank Barkow and Regine Leibinger.

Their discursive research-based approach to architecture and design allows Barkow Leibinger's work to respond to advancing knowledge and technology, locating the practice as an international leader in digital and analog fabrication techniques. This know-how expands to include new materials and their applications in driving the practice forward, a continuously evolving activity. The practice's focus revolves around a commitment to academic teaching, research, and built works — each autonomous work areas, which simultaneously inform one another. This approach manifests distinctly in each project through the interrelationships within client-architect dialogue, location, aesthetics, and purpose.

Barkow Leibinger's work is realized over a wide range of scales and building types including buildings for the workplace (industry, office, and master planning), cultural, academic, housing, event spaces, as well as exhibitions and installations in the public realm internationally. Recently completed buildings include the Sid Richardson Residential College at Rice University in Houston, the Harvard ArtLab in Cambridge, and the Trumpf Smart Factory in Chicago. In recent years, the Serpentine Summer House in London, the Fellows Pavilion for the American Academy in Berlin, the Tour Total office high-rise in Berlin, and the Trumpf Company Restaurant in Ditzingen have, among other projects, been completed.

The materials-based research of Barkow Leibinger has been featured in several exhibitions, including a solo exhibition at Berlin's Haus am Waldsee in 2020, the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, the 2014 and 2008 Venice Architecture Biennials, as well as the Architectural Association in London. The practice has won several National AIA Honor Awards for Architecture as well as various German architecture awards, among others, the DAM Prize for Architecture in Germany for the Trumpf Company Restaurant in Ditzingen in 2009. In 2007, Barkow Leibinger's work was awarded the renowned Marcus Prize for Architecture.

Frank Barkow and Regine Leibinger are both committed to academic teaching. Recently, both, are visiting professors at the Princeton University, School of Architecture. Frank Barkow has also taught, among others, at Harvard GSD, the Architectural Association in London, and Cornell University in Ithaca and Rome. From 2006 to 2018 Regine Leibinger was Professor for Building Construction and Design at the TU Berlin. Additionally, Regine is a leader in cultural institutions. She is a trustee at the American Academy in Berlin, on the visiting committee at the MIT School of Architecture, and a member of the Dean's Leadership Council at the Harvard GSD. She was named an Honorary Fellow by the AIA in 2020.

Introduction by Andrea Simitch.