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Nader Tehrani
NADAAA, Boston M.A.
Featuring an introductory conversation with John Wardle.
Tehrani and Wardle have been engaged by the University to build a landmark new building for the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. They will discuss the theoretical framework which will inform their innovative design.
Nader Tehrani is a Principal and Founder of the newly-formed NADAAA, a practice dedicated to the advancement of design innovation, inter-disciplinary collaboration, and an intensive dialogue with the construction industry. Tehrani is also a Professor and the Head of the Department of Architecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.
In this lecture, Tehrani will give an insight into how NADAAA builds on material logics, conceptual platforms, and new media as a way of advancing the boundaries of the architectural discipline. From a construction standpoint, each project is seen as an opportunity to find inherent and curious logics within material constitutions - their predisposition towards aggregation, their means and methods of assembly and the possibility of their radicalization. In turn, each project is a comment on cultural conventions, social practices, and political agendas, using the medium of construction to challenge architectural canons, dominant platforms of thinking, and indeed the building industry, whose overwhelming control over the architectural field has not yet been sufficiently targeted. The techniques of NADAAA, then, are at once formal (through material inventions, typological transformations, programming research, and spatial innovations), and juridical—looking at codes, zoning ordinances, cultural conventions, and other dominant by-laws as alibis for architectural interrogation and a way of situating architecture within a redefined cultural context.
Among these techniques, emergent technologies play a significant role in NADAAA’s research and practice. “Working with non-standard logics, with mass customization, and with parametric platforms, we temper new technologies by also addressing varied cultural platforms in order to redefine decorum within the contemporary practice,” says Tehrani. “Operating within both local and global contexts, we are able to identify strategic alliances with lo-tech economies, as well as advanced technologies to identify a new path towards integrative thinking. Working laterally with multidisciplinary teams, we adopt new strategies between design, engineering and construction to advance speculations from a broader material perspective.”
As the founding principal of Office dA, Nader Tehrani’s work received many prestigious awards, including the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, and thirteen Progressive Architecture Awards. There Tehrani was Principal-in-Charge of various award-winning projects such as the Tongxian Art Gatehouse in Beijing, the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design, Banq restaurant in Boston, Helios House in Los Angeles, the LEED-Gold certified Macallen Building, and the recently completed Hinman Research Building rehabilitation at Georgia Institute of Technology.
Tehrani received a B.F.A. and a B. Arch from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1985 and 1986 respectively, and continued on to the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he received his M.A.U.D in 1991. Tehrani has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design, and Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as the Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design. In 2011, he serves as a Donghia Designer-in-Residence at Otis College of Art and Design, a Professional Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and the Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design at the University of Toronto.
Exhibition:
To coincide with the lecture, an exhibition of selected projects by NADAAA will be on display in the Wunderlich Gallery, 22-31 March.
A special studio session has been organised for MSD students with acclaimed visiting American architect Nader Tehran on Thursday 24 Marchi. View details.
Image at top: Construction of suspended mezzanine within high bay space, Hinman Research Building renovation, Georgia Institute of Technology. Photographed by Jonathan Hillye. The architect is Lord, Aeck and Sargent in collaboration with Office dA
DEAN'S LECTURE SERIES 2011