Nader Tehrani is Principal and Founder of NADAAA, a practice dedicated to the advancement of design innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and an intensive dialogue with the construction industry.

For the past seven years in a row, NADAAA has ranked in the top eleven design firms in Architect magazine’s “Top 50 Firms in the United States”, ranking “first” for three years in a row.

He is also Dean of the Irwin S Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. Working on interdisciplinary platforms, his research focuses on the transformation of the building industry, innovative material applications, and the development of new means and methods of construction – as exemplified in his work with digital fabrication.

He will be a member of the Master Jury 2022 for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Nader Tehrani received a Bachelor of Fine Art and Bachelor of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design (1985/6), and his Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (1991).

He was Professor of Architecture and Head of the Department of Architecture, School of Architecture & Planning, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA, USA (2010-14). He has held teaching positions at Harvard GSD, Rhode Island School of Design, Northeastern University, Georgia Institute of Technology where he served as the Thomas W Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design, and Otis College of Art and Design where he served as a Donghia Designer-in-Residence. He was also a Principal and Founder of Office dA (1986-2011).

His research and installations have been exhibited in venues such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. He has authored several articles including “Aggregation” and “Difficult Synthesis” in Material Design: Informing Architecture through Materiality and “Versioning: Connubial Reciprocities of Surface and Space” in Architectural Design. His work has been internationally reviewed and published in Architect, Architectural Record, Icon, Wallpaper, Monitor, The Plan, Abitare, Mark, Frame, I.D., Contract, Archiworld, and The New York Times.

He has received awards including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture (2007), the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture (2002), and thirteen Progressive Architecture Awards. He has also been honoured with the United States Artists Fellowship in Architecture and Design (2007) and the Architectural League of New York’s Young Architects Award (1997).

Examining spaces of pedagogy, he recently completed the renovation of the Hinman Building at Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Faculty of Architecture, Building & Planning at the University of Melbourne. He worked on the renovation of the John H Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design facility at the University of Toronto.

He has also served as a juror for competitions and awards including the Canadian Governor General’s Medals in Architecture, and the New Multi-functional Administration Cities in the Republic of Korea competition, for which he was jury chair. He was a member of the Holcim Awards jury for region North America in 2011.

He won a Holcim Awards Acknowledgement prize in 2014 for “Heritage Reframed: University building renovation and extension, Toronto”. The building provides a new home for the John H Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design (DFALD) on the site of a culturally significant nineteenth century structure in the centre of Toronto. The project’s basic objectives are twofold: to rehabilitate existing urban, landscape, and architectural elements through reuse and complementary additions – and, to demonstrate the university’s aim to foreground sustainability as part of its pedagogic program using state-of-the-art construction materials and energy systems.