Architect Dr Yael Reisner combines architectural practice with research, teaching and curatorial work. A native of Tel Aviv, Reisner has a BSc in Biology but switched to architecture, finishing her studies at the Architectural Association, London, and gaining her PhD from RMIT, Melbourne.
In May last year, Yael Reisner won the competition to curate the 5th Tallinn Architecture Biennale, TAB 2019. The Biennale includes an exhibition, symposium and vision competition, focused on exploring the theme Beauty Matters: the Resurgence of Beauty, based on Reisner’s thesis, book, and her further research since 2014.
Reisner’s book, written with Fleur Watson, Architecture and Beauty, Conversations with Architects about A Troubled Relationship, was published by Wiley UK in 2010. It was the catalyst for six symposia events at: the Royal Academy, London; Venice Biennale; Lund University, Sweden; SCI Arc, Los Angeles; Pratt Institute, NYC; and Tel Aviv University. In 2014, the book was translated to Chinese.
In 2014, her original thesis research widened in scope, exploring disciplines including neurobiology neuroesthetics, and mathematics and to understand beauty’s relevance to human life and knowledge. Reisner’s research continues, seeking to explain the role of visual thinking and intuitive insight, in her quest to relate the enigma of beauty in architecture to human sense of vision.
This issue of AD shares this interdisciplinary interest in beauty and its symbiotic relationship with architecture and publishes simultaneously with the TAB 2019 catalogue.
Yael Reisner Studio is committed to research-led projects, increasingly focused on human wellbeing and the built environment, where the experience of beauty is the aspiration. Her public works include: Take My Hand, Rights and Weddings, an installation that explored human rights and wellbeing in Placa de La Merce, Barcelona (2014) produced by the Enric Miralles Foundation.
Exhibitions include: In The Mirror, an interior installation that explored the spatial experience of a pop music video. Designed together with Barnaby Gunning for‘Tomorrow’s Party’, an exhibition of digital art augmented by analogue artifice and curated by Shang Shang, Beijing (2015). In 2011, Reisner was invited by the late Will Alsop to curate an exhibition at the TESTBED1 Gallery, Battersea, London. Turning the Tables explored the parameters of this everyday item, exhibiting 14 new tables. And her proposal for a Gaetano Pesce retrospective at London’s Design Museum is under discussion.
Reisner has taught internationally since 2005 (Sci Arc,LA; Lund University; Architectural Association, London; ESA, Paris; Confluence, Lyon). Previously she taught at UCL The Bartlett for nine years, as M.Arch course coordinator and group tutor as well as Diploma Unit 11 Unit Master. In 2017 Reisner was a guest professor at Peter Behrens School of the Arts / Architecture and Design, Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, and since 2017 a PhD external examiner at RMIT University EU branch, in Barcelona.