IGOR SIDDIQUI is an architect, design scholar, and educator best known for simultaneously engaging design practice, scholarship, and pedagogy. Siddiqui’s work—variably manifested as objects, images, texts, and events—examines a broad range of situationally specific questions, with the overarching aim of linking design experimentation to public engagement. He is interested in the role that interiors play in architectural experiments, while also advocating for the value of experimentation in interiors as a distinct field of theoretical and applied knowledge.
Siddiqui’s 2025 book Oblique Experiments: Claude Parent’s Architectural Installations (1969—1975) is one of the first English-language monographs dedicated to the French avant-garde architect Claude Parent and is the first comprehensive study of his experimental interior installations from the 1970s, known as practicables. He also recently edited Interior Experiments, a special themed triple-issue volume of Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture. The journal, for which Siddiqui has served as Editor-in-Chief, Co-Editor, and Associate Editor since 2016, has become one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed publications in the field worldwide.
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
Siddiqui was born in the Croatian city of Rijeka in 1974, then part of Yugoslavia. He moved to the US while in high school, and later received architecture degrees from Tulane University (Bachelor of Architecture, 1998) and Yale University (Master of Architecture, 2003). While at Yale, Siddiqui received the Samuel J. Fogelson Memorial Award of Design Excellence and was also nominated for the H.I. Feldman Prize. His graduate thesis was on the relationship between architecture and video art.
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Siddiqui started his own practice, ISSSStudio in 2006 in Brooklyn. The studio name comes from a combination of his initials along with his friend Susan Sloan’s, who was the firm’s other original co-founder. Prior to independent practice, Siddiqui worked at 1100 Architect, where he was an architectural designer and project manager, and at Kohn Pedersen Fox. In 2005, he was awarded the Stewardson Keefe LeBrun Travel Grant by the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects. After over a decade of public use, the name of ISSSStudio was eventually retired.
He is a licensed architect with currently active registration in the State of Texas.
ACADEMIC CAREER
Siddiqui was recruited to the faculty of the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin in 2009 with the appointment of Assistant Professor. In 2015, he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. since 2018, Siddiqui has served as Program Director for Interior Design and has also led the Architecture in Europe program. He teaches a variety of design studios, visual communication, and theory courses at a range of levels across the curriculum.
He has contributed numerous essays, chapters, and articles to journals, edited books, and magazines both nationally and internationally. Siddiqui's creative work has been shown at a range of venues including the Tallinn Architecture Biennale, the Gallery of Science and Technology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade, the Contemporary Austin, SITE Santa Fe, SXSW Eco, Fusebox Festival, Metro Show Art Fair, the Ogden Museum of Art, and Flux Factory, and has appeared in various professional and popular publications such as Dwell, Interior Design, the Architect’s Newspaper, Artforum, Texas Architect, and Smart Magazine.
Siddiqui regularly gives guest lectures, workshops, and presentations about his work as a designer, educator, and scholar. He has been a visiting artist at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, the Confluence Institute in Paris, Rog Center in Ljubljana, and at Boisbuchet. Prior to his appointment at UT, Siddiqui taught at the University of Pennsylvania, California College of the Arts, and Parsons the New School for Design.