LONDON -- In private life, Farshid Moussavi is Mrs. Alejandro Zaera-Polo. Professionally, she keeps her maiden name. As a couple, the two work together in their own London-based company, Foreign Office Architects Ltd. They are young and ambitious, both high-speed workers, effective and efficient. Through their own efforts and initiatives they are becoming recognized for their imaginative concepts and originality, an architectural team to be watched.
Mobile phone clamped to her ear, Farshid hurries through the noisy streets of London, intent on her next appointment, her current presentations, and the plans in her head. She said: "I was forced very early to be independent. I was sent to boarding school in England when I was 14." She came here on her own from her native Iran. Her family home was in Shiraz, the ancient place in legend and poetry of nightingales and roses, music and story-telling.
Farshid is dramatically intense in appearance, speech and action. At school she was a clever child who did well at science, and who liked to use her hands. Her interest in architecture grew without definite pattern. "I could draw well. I mixed the technical physics and discipline with the artistic side. I cannot tell clearly how architecture came about for me," she said.
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