People

People

Instinctual Group is led by its partners, who still draw, calculate and visit site. These are the people who lead our studios and our specialist groups.

Founding partners

Anouk Verhaegen

Anouk Verhaegen

Founding Partner, Design Director

Rotterdam · Joined 2004

Anouk founded Instinctual Group with Henrik Aalstad in 2004, after eight years designing offshore accommodation modules and flood-defence pumping stations. She leads design across the practice and reviews every project at each stage, from the first site visit to handover. Her first building for the practice, the Harlingen Market Hall, still fills with stalls every market day. She led Halocline Station from its first sketch, and teaches a design studio on extreme environments every spring.

Education
MSc Architecture, Delft University of Technology; AA Diploma, Architectural Association, London
Henrik Aalstad

Henrik Aalstad

Founding Partner, Engineering Director

Oslo · Joined 2004

Henrik spent twelve years designing subsea structures and pressure vessels before co-founding the practice, and he built its engineering group from one desk to ninety engineers. His doctoral work on the buckling of pressure hulls shaped Halocline Station’s hull; his time underground shaped Halde Deep Archive. He moved to Oslo in 2019 to open the studio there and leads our work in rock, ice and water.

Education
MSc Structural Engineering and PhD, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Partners

Mei Lin Tan

Mei Lin Tan

Partner, Singapore Studio Director

Singapore · Joined 2010

Mei Lin joined the practice in 2010 to open the Singapore studio and became a partner in 2015. She led Tessera Tower from competition to completion over six years, and her research on public space at height produced its sky park. She now leads the Deep Line Interchange and sits on the practice’s design review board.

Education
MArch, National University of Singapore; MDes, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Samuel Adeyemi

Samuel Adeyemi

Partner, London Studio Director

London · Joined 2009

Samuel opened the London studio in 2009 and has led it since. His work is on the hardest urban sites: over tunnels, beside live railways, inside historic fabric, and for clients who need security without a fortress. He led Northgate Campus and leads Pelham Yard, now on site. He is a visiting critic at several London schools of architecture.

Education
MArch, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
Rafael Ibarra

Rafael Ibarra

Partner, Head of Environments

Rotterdam · Joined 2011

Rafael leads Environments, the group that designs the air, water, heat and power for buildings that cannot rely on the outside world: stations in the desert, on the ice and under the sea. Before joining in 2011 he worked on life-support systems for remote mining camps in northern Chile. His single heat loop at Nunatak Station runs the whole base on about half the fuel of a conventional one.

Education
Mechanical Engineering, Universidad de Chile; PhD Building Physics, Imperial College London
Yasmin Haddad

Yasmin Haddad

Partner, Dubai Studio Director

Dubai · Joined 2012

Yasmin joined in 2012 and opened the Dubai studio in 2016. She works on how buildings in hot climates can cool themselves with mass, shade, air and water before they reach for machines. She co-led Halocline Station’s surface pavilion and leads the Erg Solar Campus, now rising in southern Morocco.

Education
BArch, American University of Sharjah; MS Advanced Architectural Design, Columbia University

Associate partners and directors

Kenji Moriyama

Kenji Moriyama

Associate Partner, Structures

Singapore · Joined 2013

Kenji is a structural engineer who specialises in earthquakes and wind. He joined in 2013 to lead the structural design of the Base-Isolated Hospital in Sendai, then designed Tessera Tower’s diagrid and its tuned mass damper. He leads the transfer raft at Pelham Yard and was named Associate Partner in 2026.

Education
BEng and MEng Civil Engineering, University of Tokyo
Ingrid Brekke

Ingrid Brekke

Associate Partner, Polar and Mountain

Oslo · Joined 2011

Ingrid has spent nine field seasons in Antarctica and Svalbard. She leads the practice’s polar and mountain work, where a building must be designed around a single short season to build it. She led Nunatak Station and Cirque Summit Station and worked on the portal of Halde Deep Archive. She was named Associate Partner in 2026.

Education
MArch, Oslo School of Architecture and Design; Arctic Technology, The University Centre in Svalbard
Lucas Ferreira

Lucas Ferreira

Director, Secure Design

New York · Joined 2014

Lucas leads Secure Design from New York: the planning, structure and landscape that let a building protect the people inside it without looking defensive. He joined in 2014 and has worked on campuses, data halls and transit across four continents, including Northgate Campus and the Uusimaa Rock Data Hall.

Education
BArch, University of São Paulo; MArch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Clara Wendt

Clara Wendt

Director, Instinctual Lab

Rotterdam · Joined 2015

Clara directs Instinctual Lab, the practice’s research group for computational design, simulation and fabrication. Her team develops the geometry, the tests and the sensor layer that every building we complete now carries. She worked on Tessera Tower’s self-shading façade and the hull geometry of Halocline Station.

Education
Dipl.-Ing. Architecture, Technical University of Munich; MAS Architecture and Digital Fabrication, ETH Zurich

Our studios employ 420 people from 34 countries. Open positions