Cecil Balmond was born to an Anglo-Irish father and Dutch Sri Lankan mother in British Ceylon in 1949. After schooling in Colombo and Kandy, he studied Engineering in England at the University of Southampton and Imperial College London. Civil war in his parents' adopted home country of Nigeria led to Balmond moving permanently to the UK in 1975, where he rejoined his previous employer, the international firm, Ove Arup, and where he remained for four decades, before opening his own eponymous studio in 2011. Known for his contribution to global architecture and art, including the Serpentine Pavilion series, Balmond received an OBE in 2015.
Artist, architect, engineer, musician and writer, Cecil Balmond was born in 1949 in British Ceylon. His Anglo-Irish father, from a well-established family, was both the European History Professor and the Registrar at the University of Colombo. Balmond’s mother was a piano teacher and musician, from a Dutch/Sri Lankan background. Balmond attended the Royal College School in Colombo, moving to Trinity College, Kandy, when his father was appointed registrar for the new university there. Ethnic tensions led to the family leaving Sri Lanka in 1960 for Nigeria, while Balmond obtained a degree in Engineering from the University of Southampton, graduating in 1965. Balmond rejoined his family in Nigeria, where as a talented guitarist, he played in high life bands in Lagos’ clubs, even producing his own TV show. Balmond then joined the Ibadan Nigerian office of Ove Arup in 1968, but when the Biafran war broke out in 1975, he returned to the UK to continue further engineering studies at Imperial College, London. After graduation, Balmond rejoined Arup, this time in London, where he remained for four decades.
Capitalising on the power of computers, Balmond’s practice focuses on a theoretical approach, extrapolating inherent structures within maths and the environment in their purest algorithmic, and often, poetic form. The structures are rigorously, playfully questioned and extended to make fluid, organic forms, using contemporary, computer-aided techniques in traditional structural materials. They feature complexity, and simplicity, of geometry, fractal mechanics, and non-linear thinking. Balmond considers his work with the Japanese architect, Toyo Ito, on his light-filled, Serpentine Pavilion (2002) as the epitome of his practice. Its seemingly random pattern of trapezoids and triangles was based on the algorithm of a cube, with its centre placed outside the construction, rotated and expanded. Like many of his projects, the Pavilion includes light as a central part of the design, influenced by Islamic architectural practice. Balmond’s collaborations, with Indian-born artist Anish Kapoor on Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall (2002) and the ArcelorMittal Orbit (2012) at London's Olympic Park, question the capacity of materials to create scale, embodying the physical tension of steel. The architect Rem Koolhas and Balmond worked together closely for decades and the iconic CCTV Building in Beijing (2012) breaks the mould of a conventional skyscraper by connecting two leaning towers folded on to themselves at 90 degrees. For the Pedro e Ines Bridge in Coimbra, Portugal (2007), Balmond designed the cantilevered walkways which, again, express an architectural tension, as the two sides do not meet but are joined in the centre by a platform. The balcony is made up of a repeated fractal pattern in coloured glass, which, partly inspired by Islamic architecture, allows light to change perceptions of the structure throughout the day, a key signature of his practice.
Underpinning Balmond’s vision was his time at the Advanced Geometry Unit at Arup, which he led, made up of a multi-disciplinary team of mathematicians, software and structural engineers, and architects. It helped establish the Serpentine Gallery 'Pavilion' programme, which has had a huge impact on both the art and architecture world, in the UK and globally. Balmond left Arup to set up Balmond Studio in 2011. Following the ending of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2010, Balmond has been able to work in his birth country, designing and overseeing large scale projects in Columbo, regenerating the city as a hub for the region. His structural research continues, extrapolating data from DNA, curves, creating algorithms for new modular forms. In 2014, Balmond Studios created the temporary stainless steel and aluminium installation H-Edge for the new public space at Bishops Square, Spitalfields. Inspired by the Indian rope trick, it explores the physics of tensegrity, embodying infinity and zero.
As an academic, Balmond is Professor of Architecture at Penn Design, University of Pennsylvania, USA, having been the Paul Phillipe Cret Chair (2005-15), during which time he founded the Non-Linear Systems Organisation. Balmond was also Visiting Professor at Yale University (1997-2002); Professor at LSE’s Urban Cities Programme (2002-4) and Visiting Kenzo Tange critic at Harvard Graduate School of Architecture (2000). Balmond has received many awards, including the Gengo Matsui prize for the Serpentine pavilion, designed with Toyo Ito (2002); the inaugural Royal Institute of British Architects Charles Jencks prize in 2003, awarded to an individual or practice who has made a major contribution to the theory and practice of architecture; Sir Banister Fletcher Prize for best book on architecture for Informal (2005); IED Gerald Frewer Memorial Trophy (2011); and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture (2016). Snow Words, a light sculpture for Anchorage, Alaska was among the top 50 public artworks in America in 2013. Balmond was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2015.
Cecil Balmond lives in London and is married with three children. The Arcelor Mittal is on public display at the Olympic Park.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Cecil Balmond]
Publications related to [Cecil Balmond] in the Ben Uri Library