SUMMARY

This interview of Anna Neimark traces her path in architecture, highlighting her depth of historical research that has shaped her work. Born in Moscow in 1980, she grew up with two academically advanced parents. They immigrated to the United States in the early 1990s after time in Germany and France. For Neimark’s educational career, she studied with figures like Detlef Mertins, George Dodds, and Ed Eigen at Princeton. During her time there, she produced the thesis, “Ideal Monsters,” which examined Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. Working with Ed Eigen and Anthony Grafton, she began to explore the intersection between the history of science and architecture, something she would continue with Antoine Picon into the history of water infrastructure. Professionally, Neimark worked at OMA in Rotterdam and New York before she was pushed toward teaching. At USC, she began collaborating with Andrew Atwood and later co-founded First Office where their work fused her historical and conceptual ideas. Today, at SCI-Arc, her teaching draws directly from historical research to frame design as both critical and conceptual. Representing a group of young post-digital practitioners after the 2008 crash, her practice engages material and representational questions less through technology than through artistic and cultural inspiration.