BIOGRAPHY

My name is Vladin Petrov, I am an architect and I design buildings that tell stories.
Why stories are important?
Because stories instill meaning and meaning connects people and creates a joyful and purposeful life.

I’ve always been fascinated with machines, cinematography and fine art and they have an enormous influence on my work and thinking as an architect. “Cross-pollination” between disciplines that might appear totally incompatible with one another is oftentimes the way new ideas come to life from the most unexpected sources of inspiration.

When I was 9 or so, I got my very own Super8 camera – a real treasure back then – and, eager as I was to become the new Tarkovsky of some sorts, I started shooting, rather indiscriminately, everything that crossed my way. In the end, I managed to amass a formidable portfolio of reels with pigeons, cats and what not, which must’ve felt to me like the first step towards creating the next “Solaris”. I am a grown-up now but my childhood fascination with the sensations, emotions and desires that cinema has to offer had never left me. There are a lot of parallels that can be made between the work of an architect and that of a film director – they both need to lead a team of “co-conspirators” in order to realise their ideas and a final product. And they also need to adhere to budget limitations and be creative in finding a way to overcome technological and even cultural constraints that other “isolated” creators don’t have to face.

“The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony.” ― Heraclitus

I remember reading somewhere about this very famous architect who loved playing with Lego as a kid so much that he decided to become an architect when he grows up and design buildings that look like gigantic Lego blocks. I, by contrast, used to play with Meccano sets and my dream were to build structures that not only look like, but also move like machines. And so, for some inexplicable reason, I went to study architecture instead of engineering or art, probably erroneously assuming that buildings can be designed to, if not to move, then at least to change their appearances. By the time I was through with my studies, the wind unexpectedly changed direction and “the machines for living” and the whole “high-tech” movement were coming out of fashion. A lot of dogmatic and ridiculous ideas were discarded but, together with the bathwater we seem to have thrown out a few  babies as well.

After obtaining my diploma from the TU-Berlin in Germany, I moved to the very mecca of Progressive Architectural Thought – the chaotic and somewhat sleepy city of Rotterdam, where architects were allowed to freely field test their latest and boldest theories. There I joined “Oosterhuis-ONL”, one of most visionary architectural practices of the early 2000’s, run by Prof. Kas Oosterhuis and his amazing partner, the artist Ilona Lenard. They successfully managed to marry Art to Architecture (both with capital letters). Kas and Ilona were true pioneers of programmable/kinetic/interactive architecture and their ideas of moving and adaptable structures, governed both by direct physical and remote digital input are still ahead of the times. Working there I felt like being a kid in a candy shop.

The next stop in my career was mighty London, and while Britannia no longer rules the waves, it certainly still does rule the world of architecture. Probably it’s not by accident that one of my all-time favourite buildings is in London – the Lloyd’s Building by Richard Rogers. In my early professional years I was given the opportunity to work in some of the most extraordinary architectural offices in London on projects in some of the coolest architectural destination in the Middle East, China and Europe. I worked on the design of the Twin Towers for the City of Moscow with Erick van Egeraat and later on the Zayed National Museum and Masdar city with Foster+Partners, to mention a few.

Back in 2008 we established, together with a few good friends, our own international practice. We called it “Vyonyx” and for many years we helped other architects win high-profile architectural competitions. We had offices in London and Paris and then, after winning a prestigious competition ourselves to design the new basilica for the city of Split, we opened also an office in Croatia.

In 2022 “Morphipolis Architecture” was born.