The Advanced Geometry Unit (AGU) is a research-focused design group within consultant engineers Arup. By examining the structural dynamics of everything from geometric shapes and patterns to naturally occurring phenomena, AGU strives to create exciting new architectural forms and solutions. AGU was founded by Cecil Balmond, Arup deputy chairman, and is now led by Daniel Bosia. It developed out of Balmond’s interest in the genesis of form and the overlap of science with art, using music, numbers and mathematics as vital sources.

Balmond’s work is an open-ended visual application of theory. It has led to what could be described as a new forensic in aesthetics: a distillation of unrealised design potential that taps into sources that are not readily associated with architecture. It is also a compelling design force to architects working with him who value Balmond’s design principle that structure as conceptual rigour is architecture. As Balmond says, “I see structure as a punctuation of space, episodic and rhythmic. These are wholly architectural concerns.”

The AGU has enabled Balmond to pursue such ideas in the built form. It has been highly influential in a raft of renowned projects including Casa de Musica, in Portugal with Rem Koolhaas; Marsyas at the Tate Modern, with artist Anish Kapoor; and Serpentine Pavilions, with Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito as well as architects Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura.

The AGU’s approach is far from the narrowness of a formal Cartesian Modernist mind-set. Instead, Balmond welcomes irregularity, complexity, richness, in a way that is almost Baroque. He explains, “The Cartesian world is a limiting space, even though it is a good space: we use it and inhabit it. However, we know that there are other geometries. I want to resurrect geometry, in the best sense of the word, in the Greek sense, as a living organizational idea, with a philosophic root.”