Ingrid Schroder in conversation with Aaron Betsky and Nigel Coates

Join AA Director Ingrid Schroder for an informal conversation in the AA Front Members' Room with Aaron Betsky and Nigel Coates.

AARON BETSKY is a critic of art, architecture, and design. He is the author of over twenty books on those subjects. He writes a twice-weekly blog for architectmagazine.com, Beyond Buildings. Previously, he has been a Professor in the School of Architecture and Design at Virginia Tech, the Director of the School and, prior to that, President of the School of Architecture at Taliesin. Trained as an architect and in the humanities at Yale University, he has served as the Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum (2006-2014) and the Netherlands Architecture Institute (2001-2006), as well as Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1995-2001). In 2008, he also directed the 11th Venice International Biennale of Architecture. His latest books are Fifty Lessons from Frank Lloyd Wright (2021), Making It Modern (2019) and Architecture Matters (2019). His Anarchitecture: The Monster Leviathan was published by The MIT Press in 2024.

NIGEL COATES is a British designer and educator who trained at the Architectural Association 1972–4. Both as an academic and practitioner, he has always questioned the meaning and legibility of architecture, consolidating his approach as narrative. From 1978-88 he ran Unit 10 in the AA Diploma School, and in 1983 instigated the NATØ radical architecture group. In 1984 he formed Branson Coates Architecture with Doug Branson. Completed projects include Noah’s Ark, The Wall and the Art Silo in Japan, and the Geffrye Museum, the Hubs in Sheffield, Powerhouse::uk, and the Body Zone in the UK. In 1995 he became Professor of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, teaching until 2011 when he received the Annie Spink award for architectural education. Throughout his career he has undertaken polemical projects shown in museums and galleries. These include ArkAlbion, 1984, and Ecstacity, 1992, both at the AA; Mixtacity, 2007, at Tate Modern; Hypnerotosphere, 2008, at the Venice Architecture Biennale, that year directed by Aaron Betsky; and Picaresque, 2012, at the Triennale Design Museum, Milan. He is also a prolific furniture designer collaborating with leading Italian brands including Fornasetti, GTV and Poltronova.