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Javier Fernández Contreras

Javier Fernández Contreras Javier Fernández Contreras (1982) is an architect, associate professor and the dean of the Department of Interior Architecture at HEAD – Genève (HES-SO). His work explores the relationship between architecture, representation and media, with a specific focus on the role of interiors in the construct of contemporaneity. He studied Architecture at Delft University of Technology and the Madrid School of Architecture, ETSAM (Master, 2006). In 2013, he was awarded a Doctorate in architectural theory with the highest honours by ETSAM for his thesis entitled "The Miralles Plan: Thinking and Representation in Enric Miralles' Architecture", finalist in the 10th Arquia Arch.D. thesis competition. His professional career has combined architectural practice with university lecturing and research. He has taught architectural design at ETSAM in Spain (2007-2012), Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University- XJTLU in China (2013-2014) and the Department of Architecture at ETH, Zurich in Switzerland (2016). His architectural projects, including award-winning proposals for international competitions, have been published in eight books and included in several exhibitions in Europe and the United States. His critical essays on architecture and territory, architectural representation and contemporary architects’ design processes have been published in Massilia Annuaire des Études Corbuséennes, Perspectives in Metropolitan Research, Princeton 306090, CIRCO, Drawing Matter, ZARCH, Arquitectura COAM and RA Revista de Arquitectura, amongst others.
  • Influenceurs à poils

    Portrait et domesticité animale au XXIe siècle

    by
    • Javier Fernández Contreras

    La saturation médiatique, au niveau de la consommation comme de la production, fait surgir des questions inédites sur les relations non humaines, y compris avec nos très chers amis à poil. Les animaux de compagnie occupent la majeure partie de notre…

  • Social Networks as a Space of Representation

    by
    • Soheil Afzali
    • Viola Bissegger
    • Aline Blanc
    • Noémie Castella
    • Charlène Claveria
    • Lisa Divorne
    • Javier Fernández Contreras
    • Lucie Terranova
    • Noémie Tshala
    • Matteo Verrillo

    As part of a course dedicated to the Theory of Representation, first-year Bachelor's students in Interior Architecture provided chromatic analyses, or analyses of the programming and utilisation, of Tik Tok, Instagram, Pinterest, and their…

  • El Croquis. Édition nocturne

    by
    • Javier Fernández Contreras

    In this essay, Javier Fernández Contreras examines the implications of architectural photography’s daytime tropism. While Modernism saw the development of an architectural thinking inspired by nocturnal leisure and entertainment venues such as casinos…

  • El Croquis: An Architecture Magazine Success Story

    by
    • Javier Fernández Contreras
    • Sven Högger
    • Richard Levene

    In this conversation, Richard Levene returns to the origins of the leading architecture magazine El Croquis, which he co-founded as he was finishing his architecture studies in 1982. Originally published as a black and white newspaper for the…

  • A Dialogue on Interior Design Education

    by
    • Javier Fernández Contreras
    • Jean-Pierre Greff

    Interior design is subject to the growth of architecture and design, which appropriate its own field of competence. Yet interior design’s particularities — flexibility and timeliness as well as its own considerations of atmosphere, the decorative and…