Architect Dr. Yael Reisner, an architectural designer, academic, researcher, writer. She has a PhD in architecture (by design) from RMIT Melbourne, Australia, a Diploma from the Architectural Association in London (including RIBA part 1 and part 2, and a BSc in Biology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Born in Tel Aviv, she has lived in London since 1990 where she is the director of Yael Reisner Studio, an architectural research lead practice since 2004, whereas she started her professional independence at the studio in 1988, in Tel Aviv, and continued in London.

Both her Doctoral thesis (2009) and her published book (2010), were focused at understanding the troubled relationship between architecture and aesthetic since the 1930s along with studying the complex attitude amongst architects to the presence of the Self in architectural design, and its reflections upon the profession, developing an approach to architecture that involves an emotional experience, while studying the nature of the relationship between architecture and beauty in a trial to introduce beauty to architecture.

Reisner’s pursuit as an architect and educator was developed, through her long-term approach to architecture, combining the territories of visual sensitivity, intellectual depth, emotional input and aesthetic judgment for the purpose of its generation, having in mind human wellbeing.

Since 2005 Reisner teaches internationally (Sci Arc in LA, Lund Univ. in Sweden and at the AA in London, ESA in Paris) after nine years of teaching at the Bartlett (UCL) where she was the M.Arch course coordinator and a group tutor, as well as a Unit master of Diploma Unit 11. She also taught for six years at Greenwich University, School of Architecture and Landscape Design, as a senior lecturer, 1st year coordinator and unit tutor.(1993-1997)

Her book with Fleur Watson 'Architecture and Beauty, Conversations with Architects about A Troubled Relationship' was published in April 2010 by Wiley UK, and was the trigger for six symposiums since then, (at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in Venice Biennale 2010,in Lund University, in Sci Arc, in Pratt Institute, NY, and in Tel Aviv University), most of them with many participants where she was often the moderator.

The joy of curatorial work as another way of making a comment on our culture, drove her to curate Turning the Tables, an exhibition of fourteen newly designed tables, mostly by architects, for TESTBED1 Gallery in Battersea, London. Still awaiting for a the Gaetano Pesce’s Retrospective Exhibition to take place in the Design Museum, London, which her curatorial proposal was accepted in 2009.

Reisner built mostly on a domestic scale in Tel Aviv, (nine built projects), though applied to competitions for buildings in much larger scale, such as the Holy Island Competition submitted in Scotland, and lately for The National Library of Israel submitted in Jerusalem, in collaboration with ALL Design (Will Alsop and Scott Lawrie) and Nir-Kuts architects based in Tel-Aviv.

Reisner embarked on interdisciplinary research projects of a different nature at the end of 2010, continuing with design research, yet focusing at increasing the human wellbeing factor in sustainable architecture and urban environment.

What unifies these projects is the aim at applying new knowledge into a 1:1 scale of architectural installations with a clear physical presence – aspiring at beauty. Substituting alienation with sensuous architecture aiming at architecture that triggers a wide pallet of emotions, increasing the wellbeing factor in designed environment, bearing in mind that without beauty the whole idea of sustainability fails.

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