Ben Cowd is an Associate Professor and Programme Leader of the Master of Architecture in Architecture (MArch ARB/RIBA part 2).
Ben’s work has been widely published and exhibited internationally including exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Art, The Venice Biennale, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Art and Design in New York. He has lectured extensively about his research and collaborative work with Sara Shafiei (saraben-studio) and in 2012 he was awarded the ‘Grand Award for Architecture’ by the Royal Academy of Art for his work ‘Solar Topography in Rome’: A prize previously won by Lord Richard Rogers, Jan Kalicky and Eric Parry.
Before joining DMU Ben worked for Foster + Partners in London, working primarily on the BMCE banks in Morocco. He completed two buildings in Rabat and Casablanca before working on Projects in London, Libya and Switzerland. His models for the BMCE Bank were exhibited with Lord Norman Foster and Spencer De Grey at the Royal Academy of Arts: Summer Exhibition 2009. Ben is interviewed in the film 'How much does your building weight Mr Foster?' which was released at the Berlin Film Festival 2010.
Ben graduated from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL in 2007 and was named one of London’s top Art and design graduates that year by Wallpaper Magazine and the Financial Times. His final thesis project ‘The Observatory and ticket office, Rome’ has been published internationally and praised in Blueprint, Wallpaper, Bartlett Design: Speculating with Architecture, Slash: Paper Under the Knife and the AD-Exuberance.
Ben is currently programme leader of the Master of Architecture in Architecture (MArch ARB/RIBA part 2). His students have won numerous international awards including 6 commendations in the RIBA Presidents’ Medals (Silver Medal category). They have gone onto work in the offices of Lord Norman Foster, Nicholas Grimshaw, Zaha Hadid Architects and Thomas Heatherwick Studio.