Nigel Coates 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 is a spa town and 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 a historic conservation area, which grew dra ...

and was educated at Hanley Castle Grammar School before studying at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

(1968–71) and the

Architectural Association The Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, commonly referred to as the AA, is the oldest independent school of architecture in the UK and one of the most prestigious and competitive in the world. Its wide-ranging programme ...

(1972-4). 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 ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, 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 and contemporary culture generally, a £15 million project largely funded with contributions from the National Lottery, which opened on 1 Mar ...

(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 (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

London, FRAC Orléans, and the

Museum for Architectural Drawing The Museum for Architectural Drawing (german: Museum für Architekturzeichnung) 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 fr ...

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, gardener and gay rights activist. Biography Jarman was born at the Royal Victoria Nursing Home ...

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

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

, the Living Bridges exhibition at the

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

(1996), the British Pavilion at

Expo '98 Expo '98 (1998 Lisbon World Exposition) was an official specialised World's Fair held in Lisbon, Portugal from Friday, 22 May to Wednesday, 30 September 1998. The theme of the fair was "The Oceans, a Heritage for the Future", chosen in part to c ...

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 millenn ...

, the

Jigsaw Jigsaw may refer to: * Jigsaw (tool), a tool used for cutting arbitrary curves * Jigsaw puzzle, a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of interlocking pieces Arts and media Comics * Jigsaw (Marvel Comics), a supervillain and arch-enemy of ...

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 Venice Biennale of Architecture (in Italian Mostra di Architettura di Venezia) is an international exhibition of architecture from nations around the world, held in Venice, Italy, every other year. It was held on even years until 2018, but 202 ...

, Mixtacity (part of the Global Cities exhibition) at

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is ...

in 2007, his Hypnerotosphere installation at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale (a collaboration with film maker

John Maybury John Maybury (born 25 March 1958) is an English filmmaker and artist. He first came to prominence as the director of the music video for the Pet Shop Boys 1984 single "West End Girls". In 2005 he was named as one of the 100 most influential gay ...

), 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 hundr ...

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 design and art museum in the Parco Sempione in Milan, in Lombardy in northern Italy. It is housed in the Palazzo dell'Arte, which was designed by Giovanni Muzio and built between 1931 and 1933; construction was fina ...

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 research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...

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

RIBA The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is a professional body for architects primarily in the United Kingdom, but also internationally, founded for the advancement of architecture under its royal charter granted in 1837, three suppl ...

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 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

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 Year of birth missing (living people)