Mark Wigley

• Name — Mark Wigley • Birth Name — Mark Antony Wigley • Born — 1956 • Birthplace — Palmerston North, New Zealand • Field — Art history, architectural history, architectural theory

Wigley received both his Bachelor of Architecture (1979) and Ph.D. (1987) from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Mike Austin was his doctoral supervisor. Wigley left Auckland in 1986 and taught at Princeton University, from 1987 to 1999, serving also as the director of Graduate Studies at Princeton’s School of Architecture. In 1988, Wigley co-curated with Philip Johnson the MoMA exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture. The exhibition featured the works of seven architects, who were already well-known at the time for a style of architecture that involved in various ways "deconstructing" conventional notions of architectural convention: Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi, Rem Koolhaas and Coop Himmelb(l)au. The curators linked the works to the philosophical notion of Deconstruction, as espoused by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, as well as the art-architectural historical precedent of Russian constructivism, and several works from this period were displayed in the exhibition. However, of the architects involved only Eisenman and Tschumi acknowledged the connection to Derrida.

In 2005, Wigley founded Volume Magazine together with Rem Koolhaas and Ole Bouman. A collaborative project by Archis (Amsterdam), AMO Rotterdam and C-lab (Columbia University NY), Volume Magazine is an experimental think tank focusing on the process of spatial and cultural reflexivity. The magazine aims to explore "beyond architecture’s definition of 'making buildings'" by presenting global views on architecture and design, broader attitudes to social structures and created environments, and embodies progressive journalism. Created and founded in collaboration with Brett Steele, the Institute of Failure; essentially an academic institution for the instruction and theory of failure (as opposed to success).

Mark Wigley is married to architectural historian Beatriz Colomina.

• Deconstructivist Architecture, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 23 June to 30 August 1988 (with Philip Johnson) • Constant — New Babylon, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 21 November 1997 to 10 January 1998 • The American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 16 June 1998 to 8 November 1998 (with Beatriz Colomina, Elizabeth Diller, Alessandra Ponte, Ricardo Scofidio, Georges Teyssot, and Mark Wasiuta) • Another City for Another Life: Constant’s New Babylon, The Drawing Center, New York, 2 November 1999 to 30 December 1999 • Laboratories: Six Young Architectural Firms in the CCA Galleries, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 18 April 2002 to 15 September 2002 (with Frédéric Migayrou) • out of the box: price rossi stirling + matta-clark, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 23 October 2003 to 6 September 2004 (with Marco de Michelis, Philip Ursprung, Anthony Vidler, Hubertus von Amelunxen, and Mirko Zardini)