Simon Unwin

Simon Unwin
Born	1952 (age 71–72) Yorkshire, England
Nationality	British
Education	Chelsea School of Art Welsh School of Architecture (PhD)
Occupation(s)	Architect and writer
Organizations	Welsh School of Architecture (Senior Lecturer) University of Dundee (Professor of Architecture, 2004–09)
Website	simonunwin.com

Simon Unwin (born 1952) is a British architect and writer.

Life

He was born in 1952 in Yorkshire, but grew up in Wales.

He studied at the Chelsea School of Art in London and the Welsh School of Architecture in Cardiff. From the Welsh School of Architecture, he obtained a PhD, and he went on to become a senior lecturer there.

From 2004 to 2009, he was Professor of Architecture at the University of Dundee, where he is now an emeritus professor.

He currently resides in Cardiff.

Work

Unwin has written several books about architecture:

• An Architecture Notebook: Wall (2000) ISBN 0415228735
• Doorway (2007) ISBN 9780415458818
• Exercises in Architecture: Learning to Think as an Architect (2012) ISBN 9781136486623
• Analysing Architecture (fourth edition, 2014) ISBN 9781317810940
• Twenty-Five Buildings Every Architect Should Understand (2015; first published in 2010 as Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand) ISBN 9781317555025
• The Ten Most Influential Buildings in History: Architecture's Archetypes (2016) ISBN 9781317483243
• Children as Place-makers: The Innate Architect in All of Us (2019) ISBN 9781138046009
• Curve: Possibilities and Problems with Deviating from the Straight in Architecture (2019) ISBN 9781138045941
• Metaphor: An Exploration of the Metaphorical Dimensions and Potential of Architecture (2019) ISBN 9781138045439

In Twenty-Five Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, he analyses the following buildings:

Number	Name	Architect	Year	Description
1	Casa del Ojo de Agua	Ada Dewes and Sergio Puente	1985–90	A house in the Mexican jungle
2	Neuendorf House	John Pawson and Claudio Silvestrin	1987–89	A holiday home on the island of Mallorca
3	Barcelona Pavilion	Mies van der Rohe	1929	Built as the German Pavilion at the Barcelona Universal Exposition
4	Truss Wall House	Kathryn Findlay and Eisaku Ushida	1993	A house in the Tsurukawa suburb of Machida-City, Japan
5	Endless House	Friedrich/Frederick Kiesler	1947–61	An unbuilt project for a house based in infinity
6	Farnsworth House	Mies van der Rohe	1950 (designed c.1945)	On the banks of Fox River near Plano, Illinois, US
7	La Congiunta	Peter Märkli	1992	A gallery for the sculpture of Hans Josephsohn, Giornico, Switzerland
8	Un Cabanon	Le Corbusier	1952	An architect's vacation cabin at Cap Martin, on the south coast of France
9	Esherick House	Louis Kahn	1959–61	A house in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
10	Maison à Bordeaux	Rem Koolhaas	1998	A house for a man confined to a wheelchair
11	Danteum	Giuseppe Terragni	1938	An unbuilt memorial to Dante Alighieri, intended for Mussolini's Rome
12	Fallingwater	Frank Lloyd Wright	1933–36	The house over a water fall in rural Pennsylvania
13	Villa Savoye	Le Corbusier	1929	A house in the Poissy suburb of Paris, France
14	Kempsey Guest Studio	Glenn Murcutt	1992	A converted shed in New South Wales, Australia
15	Condominium One, The Sea Ranch	Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull, Whitaker	1965	A settlement of ten residential units on California's north coast
16	Villa E.1027	Eileen Gray (and Jean Badovici)	1926–29	An architect's vacation house at Cap Martin, on the south coast of France
17	Church of St Petri	Sigurd Lewerentz	1963–66	A Lutheran church in the southern Swedish town of Klippan
18	Villa Busk	Sverre Fehn	1987–90	A musician's house south of Oslo, Norway
19	Villa Mairea	Alvar Aalto	1937–39	A house in the woods of western Finland
20	Thermal Baths, Vals	Peter Zumthor	1996	A bathing complex attached to a hotel in a Swiss valley
21	Ramesh House	Liza Raju Subhadra (R.S. Liza)	2003	An environmentally responsive house in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
22	Bardi House	Lina Bo Bardi	1949–52	A house in its own patch of rainforest on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil
23	Vitra Fire Station	Zaha Hadid	1990–93	A fire station for a furniture factory estate in north Switzerland
24	Mohrmann House	Hans Scharoun	1939	A family house in the Lichtenrade suburb of Berlin, designed to subvert political restrictions
25	Bioscleave House	Madeline Gins and Arakawa	2008	A house extension in East Hampton, New York, designed to subvert relationships with setting to counter mortal degeneration