Zoe Zenghelis’ paintings create an imaginary inspired by metropolitan structures, landforms and abstract tectonics. Born in Athens in 1937, she began her career as a founding member of Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), where her contributions created new opportunities for the group at the vanguard of architectural representation. Within, alongside and beyond this collaboration, Zenghelis developed a body of work exhibiting a playful and iconoclastic evocation of a very particular urban form – one that is perhaps a surreal mix of the Aegean landscape of her youth and metropolitan cities such as Paris, Berlin, New York or London. She has lived and worked in the latter since 1955.

Do You Remember How Perfect Everything Was? traces the development of Zenghelis’ artistic career through her paintings, projects and teaching. Published to accompany her first major retrospective exhibition, this monograph assembles an extensive selection of Zenghelis’ work from the early 1960s to 2020, alongside a unique collection of her paintings as a member of OMA. Containing a number of studies, sketches and archival documents, it reviews the working process behind Zenghelis’ OMA projects and teaching methods at the Architectural Association.

Hamed Khosravi

AA Publications, 2022

28 X 22 cm, 304 pages