Alexander Sverdlov

Alexander Sverdlov is an architect based in Rotterdam (NL). After graduating from the Berlage Institute, he joined Neutelings Riedijk Architecten as a project leader for architectural and masterplanning competitions. He subsequently worked at OMA/AMO, where he led the Hermitage Museum extension, and continued his career at WEST 8 as a project architect on several award-winning international projects, including the Park Lineal in Madrid.

Alexander later joined Winy Maas and his team at MVRDV’s Why Factory—a global think tank and school for the future city at TU Delft—where he worked as a tutor, programmer, and researcher. During his tenure, he oversaw research trajectories such as Visionary Cities, Vertical Village, Absolute Leisure, and Porocity, and co-authored several publications in the Why Factory series.

In his own practice, SVESMI, Alexander has consistently focused on socio-cultural networks that emerged in twentieth-century welfare states on both sides of the former Iron Curtain—from public library systems to structures of elderly care—actively reinterpreting them for contemporary contexts. Throughout his career, he has developed new models for schools, district cultural centres, social housing, and branch libraries, proposing strategies to reform obsolete urban systems and move beyond the limitations of past planning paradigms.

In his current projects, he explores the concept of green porosity, with a particular interest in transformative rethinking of modernist Athens.