Cecil Balmond is  Director of the Advanced Geometry Unit (AGU), which he founded in 2000. AGU is a research-focused design group at Arup where Cecil now focuses his work with architects, scientists and engineers.

Recently completed projects with AGU include the widely acclaimed Pedro and Ines footbridge in Coimbra, Portugal (2006) and the H_edge installation for Artists Space, New York (2006). Projects currently under construction include the Centre Pompidou, Metz with Shigeru Ban (2009) and the CCTV New Headquarters, Beijing with OMA (2008).

Cecil is the author of No. 9 (1998) and Informal (2002), which was awarded the Banister Fletcher Prize for Best Book on Architecture. In 2002, he received one of Japan’s most prestigious awards for structural engineers, the Gengo Matsui Prize, and in 2003, he won the RIBA Charles Jencks Award for Theory in Practice. In 2007, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark hosted a major exhibition of Cecil’s work. 2007 also saw the publication of Cecil’s latest book Element (Prestel). A further exhibition of Balmond’s work will open at the Graham Foundation, Chicago in September 2008. Both the Danish and US shows incorporate H_edge.

Cecil lectures and teaches at various architectural schools in Europe and the USA. He was appointed visiting Kenzo Tange professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Architecture; Saarinen Professor at Yale University School of Architecture. Balmond is now the Crét Chair at Penn Design (the position once held by Louis Kahn), where he is developing a radical programme on the generation of form