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Nader Tehrani Lecture | Current Work: Schools of Thought

POSTED ON: May 30, 2017

In addition to his role as Dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, 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.”

He organizes his lecture around three projects for schools of design: the Hinman Research Building at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne, and the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto. These projects explore the relationship of these buildings to spaces of scholarship, making, and the accidents that happen in between these moments and, “some kind of reciprocity between the institutions we [as architects] try to cultivate, and the spaces they foster.”

The lecture is followed by a discussion with Florian Idenburg, a founding partner of SO–IL and Associate Professor in Practice of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

This lecture took place in the Great Hall of The Cooper Union on April 5, 2017.

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  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.