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Current Work is a lecture series featuring leading figures in the worlds of architecture, urbanism, design, and art.
Nader Tehrani is the principal of NADAAA, a practice he founded in 2011 with Katherine Faulkner and Daniel Gallagher. The firm grew out of Office dA, a practice he formed in 1986 with Rodolphe El Khoury, which later expanded to include Monica Ponce de Leon in 1991. With offices in New York and Boston, NADAAA is dedicated to “the advancement of design innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and an intensive dialogue with the construction industry.”
NADAAA collaborated with John Wardle Architects (JWA) of Melbourne, Australia on the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne, which was completed in 2015. Central to the project is the Studio Hall, enclosed by a coffered timber roof that mediates natural daylight and assists natural ventilation.
In Atlanta, NADAAA worked with Lord Aeck Sargent Architecture on the Hinman Research Center on Georgia Tech’s campus. The architects transformed the 35,000 square-foot interior of a 1939 building to include research labs and a collection of design studios suspended on a platform tray from the building’s original crane gantry.
Opening in 2017, the firm’s renovation and expansion project for the University of Toronto John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design incorporates interconnected graduate and undergraduate design studios in a 19th-century Gothic Revival building while uncovering and restoring its prominent staircase, masonry, and arched hallways. All schools of architecture and design, they also give form to varied schools of thought.
The firm continues to work on a variety of institutional projects for MIT, RISD, and Beaver Country Day School, while expanding their work internationally with projects under construction in France and Australia. The Tanderrum Bridge in Melbourne, another collaboration with JWA, is on the verge of completion.
Tehrani received a B.F.A. and a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. He continued his studies at the Architectural Association, where he attended the postgraduate program in History and Theory. Subsequently, Tehrani received the M.A.U.D from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Tehrani serves as the Dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union in New York. He was previously a professor of architecture at MIT, where he served as the Head of the Department from 2010-2014. Tehrani has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design, and has also served as the Ventullet Chair at Georgia Tech and the Gehry Chair at the University of Toronto. His work has been recognized with the 2007 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture, the 2002 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, and 16 Progressive Architecture Awards. In 2007, he became a United States Artists Fellow.
Florian Idenburg will moderate a discussion with Tehrani after the lecture. Idenburg is Founding Partner of SO–IL and Associate Professor in Practice of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Anthony Vidler will introduce the lecture. He is professor of architecture at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union, where he formerly served as dean.
This lecture is co-sponsored by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union. It is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
