Jo Coenen was born in 1949 in Heerlen, the Netherlands. He studied Architecture at the Technical University of Eindhoven where he graduated in 1975. Between 1977 and 1987 he studied with Luigi Snozzi in Locarno, Switzerland and with James Stirling, in Düsseldorf. In 1979 he worked with Aldo van Eyck and Theo Bosch in Amsterdam and that same year he set up his own office in Eindhoven, which he moved to Maastricht in 1990. In 1999 he set up a second office in Berlin, in 2002 two more offices in Luxembourg and Amsterdam and in 2007 his latest studio, in Milan. He has filled various national and international professorships; as a Professor of Building Sciences at the Technical University of Karlsruhe in Germany from 1987 to 1995, as a Professor at the Technical University of Delft since 2001 and, at the same university, in the position of chairman of the Department of Restoration 'Metamorphoses, Interventions, Transformations (®MIT)' since 2006. He has won several architectural awards, such as the BNA-Kubus in 1995, (BNA: Royal Institute of Dutch Architects) and the BNA 'Best Building of the Year' for his Vesteda Tower in Eindhoven in 2007. He was elected honorary member of the German Architects Association in 1995 and he received an honorary doctorate by the Open University of the Netherlands in 2004.He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1980, the Milan Triennale in 1995 and the São Paolo Biennale in 1997, as well as in many international workshops, symposia and congresses.He has been an invited lecturer, for example at the RIBA in London (The concepts for the living city), the Getty Centre Santa Monica (Building in old context) and the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de la Comunidad of Valencia (Experiencias en edificios publicos).He has been a member of many juries such as the Jury of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Jury of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects in Sidney.His projects have been exposed in several international exhibitions such as Discovery of the architecture, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Graz, Heerlen, Housing the book, seven libraries by Jo Coenen, Berlin, Paris, Milan, Düsseldorf and Three Buildings, Seven motives, One story, Amsterdam. Influenced and inspired by his many contacts in Central and Southern Europe he has designed many architectural and urban development projects; among the most famous ones are the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam, the master plan for the Centre Céramique and its public library in Maastricht and the master plan for the KNSM Island in Amsterdam. Ever since 1987, he has been taking up the role of Supervisor for Town Planning in cities such as The Hague, Amsterdam, Maastricht, Eindhoven and Tilburg.From 2000 to 2004 he was Chief Government Architect of the Netherlands in The Hague, bringing back the discipline of designing into achieves of this important role.In all his projects the attention to the context of the plan is as important as the design itself, which ensures a unique approach of the tensioned space between public and private. Last year, three important works of his hands were completed. First, The Vesteda Tower, which won the BNA Best Building of the Year Award, in Eindhoven, then the Mosae Forum and the urban development project Maasoevers in Maastricht, which started 17 years ago and has now received two awards, and finally, the Amsterdam Public Library (OBA), hosting 2,5 million of visitors a year, which received the International Architecture Award 2008.