Neil Spiller
Neil Spiller | |
|---|---|
| Born | Neil Alexander Spiller 22 October 1961 |
| Occupations |
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| Known for |
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| Spouse |
Melissa Jones
(m. 1997; div. 2012) |
| Children | 2 |
| Parents |
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| Relatives | Simon Spiller (brother) |
| Academic background | |
| Education | The Geoffrey Chaucer School |
| Alma mater | Thames Polytechnic |
| Influences | |
Prof. Neil Alexander Spiller (born 22 October 1961) is an English visionary architect, artist, educator and editor of Architectural Design (AD). He is widely regarded as a paradigm-shifting theorist in the architectural discourse.
Spiller is known for being the founding director of the Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research (AVATAR) Group, an academic research unit and think tank established at The Bartlett, University College London (UCL), which pioneered the implementation of digital theory in architecture. Outside of academia, he is best known artistically for his long project and paracosm, Communicating Vessels (1998–).
Stylistically, Spiller produces what he terms 'interstitial drawings', created with reference to the conventions of architectural drawing but representing structures unable to be built outside of virtual space, sometimes blending between isometric, axonometric, perspective and elevation. He is a champion of the notion that architecture must not be bound to the tangible. As he writes: '[m]y preoccupation is to compositionally straddle the virtual and the actual, art and matter'.