Tszwai So is a London based architect whose work ranges from architecture, public arts, visual arts, installations, and writing to filmmaking. He is the co-founding Director of Sphe-ron Architects. He teaches at the University of Westminster.
Tszwai So and the practice have been nominated for and won many awards. He was named a rising star in British Architecture by the RIBA Journal in 2016. He was named the best UK young architect under 40 in 2017 by the American Institute of Architects.
The Belarusian Memorial Chapel, in London, commissioned by the Holy See of Rome and completed in 2017 - the first wooden church built in London since the Great Fire in 1666 - had been nominated in 2018 for the EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture - the Mies van der Rohe Award. The same year, the church won the Religious Building of the Year award at the 2018 World Architecture Festival held in Amsterdam.
In his work, Tszwai is always aware of the power of emotions. Last year, the exhibition “Emotional Architecture” at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge gave an insight in emotions related to the world of architecture, too often neglected in our always more digi-talized world. A world where parameters and thus machines and AI, are becoming the driving factors, leaving human needs behind.
Together with Tszwai we will explore why emotionalism is becoming an always more ur-gent topic in a moment in which reality and the virtual are already indistinguishable. Still, nobody seems much to care about that, although it will have enormous consequences on our lives.