About
Vlad Tenu is a Romanian-British architect based in London.
From architectural design and teaching to art installations, sculptures, modular assembly systems and wearable art pieces, Vlad’s work is a continuous explorative research into spatiality, scale and materiality.
Inspired by underlying processes of nature, his design workflow is a symbiotic mix of art and science involving mathematical concepts and algorithmic techniques.
Portrait by FORBES Romania. Photo: Marius Michailov
Vlad’s cross-disciplinary approach to design and fabrication is about reinventing the digital craft in the creation of ambitious, experiential designs: site specific sculptural installations, exhibition pavilions and pop-up display pieces, public art and private commissions, as well as creative collaborations with international brands and celebrities.
Björk wearing Foraeva by Lana Dumitru & Vlad Tenu
ART & DESIGN
His experimental work includes award-wining pieces such as Minimal Complexity, the winner of the TEX-FAB Repeat Competition 2010 and an AIA Houston Design Award 2012. The piece was also exhibited at London Festival of Architecture 2012, London Design Festival 2012 and Sleep Hotel 2013.
Solo exhibitions include Synthetic Nature London 2013 and Glimpses of Infinite Symmetry Bucharest 2014. He was also the curator of Process - an exhibition on cutting-edge architectural designs in Shanghai in 2014.
His modular system Miniplex was exhibited in various configurations at London Festival of Architecture 2017, Plug-in-to-the-future at ARUP Phase2 Gallery London and Shenzhen Design Week 2019. Vlad’s works have also been displayed in art and technology festivals such as Unfinished 2018 and BINAR 2019 in Bucharest.
Minimal Complexity in the atrium of Central Saint Martins.
WEARABLE ART & FASHION
Vlad Tenu co-founded FORÆVA with fashion designer Lana Dumitru. Working in collaboration with Swarovski, they designed and produced a crystal dress made of 25,000 Swarovski crystals. The dress has been launched at Swarovski’s Brilliance Redefined exhibition in Hong Kong and worn on stage by Björk as part of her Utopia Tour 2018.
His previous fashion collaborations include head pieces and a display piece for CLON8 at Paris Fashion Week 2015 and a modular pop-up shop for Del Rio London at LeBonMarché in Paris in 2015.
ACADEMIA & TEACHING
Vlad Tenu studied architecture in Iasi, Lisbon and London at the Bartlett UCL, where he has been awarded a MSc. in Adaptive Architecture & Computation in 2009 and a Certificate in Advanced Architectural Research in 2010.
He has been involved in teaching at the Bartlett since 2009, initially as an assistant and currently as a dissertation technical tutor on the Architectural Computation course.
Vlad gave lectures and presentations at leading academic institutions such as the Architectural Association, Bartlett, G.D. Hines College of Architecture in Houston, Aarhus School of Architecture and Cooper Union in New York during ACADIA 2010 Conference.
Vlad Tenu also took part in various discussion panels and presented at international design events and conferences such as Shenzhen Design Week 2019, SHARE X Bucharest 2019, EUSight Talks in Shanghai 2014, Galateca Bucharest 2014, Rising Minds inaugural session at Shoreditch House 2013 and BIFE Conference in Bucharest 2012.
ARCHITECTURE
Vlad is an ARB registered architect. His almost 15 years of architectural experience include working with award winning studios such as Surface Architects, Urban Systems and currently with the Sterling Prize Winner practice Allford Hall Monaghan Morris.