Ben Cowd

Ben Cowd studied Architecture at the Bartlett, UCL under the supervision of Dr Marjan Colletti and Dr Marcus Cruz in Unit 20. During his two years in Diploma, Unit 20 received unprecedented success, being awarded the prize for best unit by Paul Finch in 2006 and again the following year by Lord Richard Rogers. Collaborating with Sara Shafiei during his fourth year, Cowd received attention for the drawings of the ‘Palo Monte Ritual Centre’ that explored the use of bamboo as a sculptural and sustainable building material for Cuba. The drawings have since been published and exhibited worldwide to promote the use of Bamboo in Building. Cowd’s final thesis project, The Observatory has been published internationally and praised in Wallpaper magazine’s Graduate Directory, Financial Times, Blueprint and Bartlett Design: Speculating with Architecture (2009). It has been widely exhibited since graduating including The Royal Academy of Art Summer Exhibition in 2008 and the Museum of Art and Design (MAD) in New York.

Following his success at the Bartlett, Ben Cowd reformed a successful working relationship with Sara Shafiei. In November 2007 the pair staged the Saraben Exhibition at the Dreamspace Gallery, London that attracted over 500 visitors and won critical acclaim. The pair now collaborates under the name Saraben and released saraben-studio.com in February 2008. In 2009 Ben collaborated with fellow Horhizon member Tobias Klein on the model Contoured Embodiment for the Royal Academy of Art Summer Exhibition.

Saraben-Studio is currently exhibiting work at MAD in New York and was awarded joint-first place in an invited design competition for a flagship fashion store in Madrid, Spain. They currently teach undergraduate and post-graduate units at The Leicester School of Architecture (LSA).