Fernando Donis

Fernando Donis is an award-winning architect established in the Netherlands and Mexico leading DONIS, an international office of architecture ´framing´ cities – theorizing and projecting them. Through research and projects DONIS participates in the unprecedented development of the cities of this century.

Associate to Rem Koolhaas for eight years at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Fernando Donis is the designer of the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing for OMA in 2002, awarded as the best tall building worldwide in 2013 by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). For OMA, he is also the designer of the project for the new Jeddah International Airport in Saudi Arabia, the Porsche Design towers in Dubai and the Dubai Renaissance tower, among many more projects and master plans for which he was in charge.

Founded in 2009, DONIS is currently developing and building several projects, and has also won international prizes such as the first prize for the ThyssenKrupp Architecture Award in 2009 among 926 proposals, with the Dubai Frame, under construction; the first prize for a competition for the National Palace of Justice in Paris; and the first prize for the design of an Olympic emblem for London 2012.

Fernando Donis received his master's degree from the Architectural Association in London, and holds a PhD in Architecture from the TU Delft in the Netherlands with his thesis to be published in the upcoming book FRAME. He was selected by CNN Expansion as one of the 30 most promising and influential people in Mexico in 2011, and in 2015 as one of the most creative Mexicans abroad by the Foreign Relations Department of Mexico.

The Dubai Frame is the subject of an intellectual property dispute in Dubai.[1]