Peter Tagiuri
Peter Tagiuri is a practicing architect and professor. As an architect he collaborates with AOI in London; Kilo in Paris and Casablanca; Wangshu, Jeremiah Watson and Haoru Chen in Hangzhou; Rutz Architects in Zurich; and Gauche Concepts in Tokyo. He has building and urban projects in China, England, France, Japan, North Africa and the US. He began teaching at RISD in 1987 (and was department head from 2002–06) and is visiting professor at the CAA in Hangzhou, guest chair professor at Ren Min University, Beijing and external examiner at Edinburgh University and CUHK. He has been a guest professor at the architecture schools in Frankfurt, Stuttgart and the ETH, Zurich and has been visiting lecturer in Beijing, Hong Kong, Lima, London, Osaka, Paris and Seoul. He has degrees from Dartmouth and Harvard, and he attended the Belle Arte in Rome and Carrara.
Academic areas of interest
In teaching (as in practice), Tagiuri enjoys the critical discourse that emerges out of design focused on culture and difference, on idea and physicality. There are revelations in the latent potential of site, the economy of local materials and the common sense of building methods, in the study of weather and the way plants grow. There is much to be learned in awkwardness and misalignment and in complexity and the approximation of perfection. We go abroad to understand who we are, where we are from and to expand our experience of the sensible world. There are discoveries to be made in mistakes, in bodily experience, in the difficulties arising from translation and misunderstanding, in ingesting culture by culinary dislike and delight, in getting lost and found. We find a common ground in the interconnectedness of environmental issues, the residue of words and history, the changing accord of city and country, in water. Our design profession allows us the means to enter other cultures (including nature) intensely and responsibly, to use design to create dialogue and construction to hold meaning, to use the resistance of drawing and model to make discoveries, to use program to take a stance and material and method to make manifest. For students and teachers too, it is our difference that makes interaction remarkable. In addressing discontinuities we design, we find our opportunities for expression, we make visible relationships and construct our world to dwell in.