‘Touch Wood: Material, Architecture, Future’

Posted on June 13th, 2023 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Academic, Press

Nader reviews Carla Ferrer, Thomas Hildebrand, and Celina Marinez-Cañavate’s new book for Architectural Record. The book explores forest management and the “illusion of infinite bounty”, the “present architectural arms race to build enlightened wood structures”, and the future of timber.

“Composed of three segments, its various writers bring perspectives ranging in disciplines to allow for a broader cultural reading than any conventional book on wood technologies. Acknowledging the already present and looming crisis of climate change as a central protagonist, the book also positions the balance of merits and liabilities in developing an attitude toward the production of wood, allowing the readers to better understand how a sustainable production of wood is a plan that cannot occur as a single decision but as something that requires ongoing efforts over years, administrations, nations, and cultures.”

Read on HERE.

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DECARBONIZING THE CURRICULUM

Posted on September 20th, 2022 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Academic

Photo © Sam Dufaux

Fred Bernstein writes for Architectural Record this month on widespread changes to architecture schools’ curricula that are attempting to right the ship in terms of architecture’s role in global warming. Bernstein interviews several deans, chairs, and professors about ways their schools are pushing students to frame their work around climate change. Nader shares that “For too long, we’ve been teaching students how to integrate mechanical systems into buildings, when we should be looking at how to create building envelopes that reduce reliance on those systems.”

Read on for how schools like the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto are approaching their design projects with net zero as a primary constraint HERE.

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Approaching Architecture: Three Fields, One Discipline

Posted on August 25th, 2022 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Academic, Press

Miguel Guitart’s new book Approaching Architecture: Three Fields, One Discipline has been released for pre-order and includes a foreword by Nader Tehrani and contributions from 18 globally diverse teams of architects.

Purchase Approaching Architecture HERE.

More on Guitart’s work HERE.

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Keynote Address: Sam Fox School of Design

Posted on June 9th, 2022 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Academic

Nader Tehrani delivers the keynote address for the 2022 Sam Fox School Recognition Ceremony at Washington University in St. Louis. Nader speaks of building relevance during challenging and urgent times.

Sending congratulations to all 2022 graduates!

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Body, Object, Enclosure

Posted on January 27th, 2022 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Academic, Press

“The morphological particularities of the body offer a productive clue via their engagement with architecture, if only that the interface between the human and its environment may begin with the body as a system of parts: the torso, limbs, digits or head all establish a special relationship with the built environment. With the hand as maybe one of the most dexterous instruments of intelligence, it is also the most prone to architectural engagement, not only in the tactility of surfaces around us, but in the mechanical protocols of hardware, instruments, and vessels that mediate between the human and its environment: doorknobs, pulls, flatware, cups, and many industrial design artifacts are the first registration of such encounters.”

Jonathon Anderson and Lois Weinthal’s new book Digital Fabrication in Interior Design: Body, Object, Enclosure has been released! The book includes an essay entitled “The Figure in Translation” by Nader Tehrani.

Available for order HERE.

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Blank Shots

Posted on January 24th, 2022 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Academic, Press

“Among the many tendencies that characterize design thinking, one stands out from a material perspective: in identifying a single medium through which to work, the architect is able to force invention from within a genre, and in doing so, to radicalize its ability to transform, evolve, and innovate. There is a seductive allure to the idea that one might entirely conceive of a project in cross-laminated timber”

Jennifer Bonner and Hanif Kara’s new book Blank: Speculations on CLT has been released and includes an essay entitled “Blank Shots: Monolithic Desires and Laminar Inevitabilities” by Nader Tehrani.

Purchase Blank HERE.

More on Bonner and Kara’s mass timber research HERE.

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2022 Aga Khan Award for Architecture Jury Announced

Posted on September 23rd, 2021 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Academic, Things We Like

The members of the Master Jury for the 2020-2022 Cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture were announced today. The Jury, which independently selects the recipients of the US $1 million Award, will convene in January 2022 to select a shortlist from hundreds of nominated projects.

More on the program and jury members HERE.

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edu.arh: Practices in Architectural Education

Posted on February 8th, 2021 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Academic

Boštjan Vuga interviewed Nader among other architects/scholars for this exhibition accompanying the 100th anniversary of the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana. The exhibit raises questions of architectural education today and the role architecture schools play in society. The exhibition is commissioned by and located at the Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana and will run through the end of May.

“In the academy, we bring the circumstances of the world back into the studio, but effectively with challenges that require new forms of exploration, experimentation, and rethinking –maintaining a speculative edge for the school. What we don’t necessarily do is to prepare the students for what constitutes practice as we know it today. Instead, what we imagine is that we are preparing students for a practice that has yet to be, something that they need to imagine, project forth, and advance –in order that they themselves develop new protocols and practices that are unprecedented for uncertain times that lie ahead.”

-Nader Tehrani

More about the exhibition HERE.

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Nader on Confluence in the Work of Eladio Dieste

Posted on September 28th, 2020 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Academic, Press

On the twentieth anniversary of Eladio Dieste’s passing, Nader writes on ‘confluence’ in Dieste’s work in AR Confluences. Eladio Dieste, an Uragayian ‘designer’ and a “great, yet lesser-known, 20th-century thinker who operated outside of the modernist canons” has had his work analyzed by many writers, all of which “note the way in which art and science are brought into confluence, revealing with great analytical precision how Dieste worked with the science of engineering to achieve geometric and structural feats that are deemed great works of ‘art.’”

“At the same time, it was the strategic way in which he brought the confluence of mathematics, geometric thinking, the protocols of construction, material innovation and historical knowledge into dialogue that made possible the types of inventions he unleashed [..] the laws of physics and optics come into an improbable alliance—not natural, nor harmonious or obvious—but a masterful aplomb of artifice to witness.”

Read the full essay HERE.

AR/Architecture Research is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published yearly by the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Architecture. AR Confluences is guest-edited by Robert McCarter.

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Dimensions 33: Discovering Sensibilities

Posted on May 15th, 2020 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Academic

Liyah George and Abirami Manivannan interview Nader for Dimensions 33 by Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan.

Read on HERE.

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