Nader reviews ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a House’

Posted on April 10th, 2022 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Things We Like

The new book by Stella Betts and David Leven of LevenBetts is reviewed by Nader for Architectural Record.

“This book is a testament to how the ethic of iteration in architecture evolves into discipline […] with 13 themes and houses, each replete with wider cultural contexts that include literature, art, architectural precedents, and film. Open House, Campsite, Doors and Windows, Steps and Stairs, Corridors, Courtyards, Curtains, Plumbing, House Plants, Plans, Structures, Thick and Thin, Home—when listed like this, they appear as nothing more than benign architectural elements. But in the authors’ minds, each is conceptualized as an indispensable element of a mis-en-scène that anticipates the events that invariably get acted out, with each one serving as another protagonist onstage.”

Read on HERE.

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La Biennale di Venezia: ‘Other Ways of Living Together’

Posted on July 7th, 2021 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: _Venice Biennale, Installations + Exhibitions

The Venice Biennale Architettura 2021: How will we live together?

Other Ways of Living Together
By: NADAAA
Arsenale, Interior

The built landscape has taken on a global scale. There is little on the earth that has not been impacted by the human footprint. How we live together and where we live is described by great environmental diversity from the urban to the rural with the suburban and industrial territories in between. There are certainly other spaces also, but the predominance of these four stands out, and we have examined them with a few principles in mind.

The first revolves around an ethic of Existenzminimum whereby the density, flexibility, and efficiency of residential buildings are challenged once again from an architectural vantage point; a legacy of the 20th century, this is a moment of reckoning in relation to current environmental and social challenges.

Secondly, because of this first ethic, many typological conventions and code constraints may require reconsideration in order to imagine other ways of living together. We have probed certain loopholes in each case

study to unleash certain plausible eventualities, drawing from common standards, but overturning them in the interest of invention.

Thirdly, all these studies emerge from a common interest in working with naturally renewable resources. We have worked with mass timber, in particular the relationship between cross-laminated timber and stud framing, the first being described by the combination of structural and thermal mass while the second being characterized by its hollow cavity, enabling the threading of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing services within a structural wall. Traditionally seen as independent or mutually exclusive, here we will present these two systems as symbiotically co-dependent.

The sites of these studies revolve around the greater Boston area, but their implications may be as relevant for many other international regions.


THE CITY CENTER: THE VERTICAL ROW HOUSE

Similar to other urban centers, Boston has developed almost all of its inner-city infill sites. Thus, we are tapping into opportunities for rewriting zoning by-laws for urban corridors that are already tall in nature due to historical circumstances and acquiring air rights in areas that might

benefit from higher density. Such is the case on Washington Street in Boston’s South End where we propose establishing a building height that is double the neighboring row houses that will serve as a point of orientation for Worcester Square.

Berkeley and Commonwealth Ave, Boston, photo by Google

The mandate of two means of egress defines one of the indispensable elements of safety in residential structures. The double-helical fire stair serves to radicalize the efficiency of two means of egress contained within the same footprint. However, never before has the fire stair also served as a communicating stair between two floors of the same unit—or alternatively a communicating stair between two apartments on different floors that might be refashioned as a single unit.

With the introduction of added fire doors, the centerpiece of this vertical “slab” building takes advantage of this loophole to create a loft unit that is defined by a double-height living space in combination with a side ambulatory that can be separated into three bedrooms. The efficiency of the typical South End rowhouse is maintained in the tower at 84%. However, the number of bedrooms is tripled to 21 from 7 by up-zoning and hybridizing the double-helical fire stair (both public/private space).

A TOWER OF 14 BEAMS: The structure is composed of an envelope enclosure of cross-laminated timber, hybridized with infill walls of stud framing providing hollow cavities

for the MEP systems. The structural envelope beams are 8 feet deep and span 80 feet and are visible from the street as the main image of the building.


THE SUBURBS: A DENSIFIED MAT

The suburban condition of Revere, Massachusetts is composed of residential lots, replete with front, side, and back setbacks that are an embodiment of the American dream: the prospect of one’s own lawn. And yet, ironically, with a front lawn that is socially evacuated, and side-lots that cannot be inhabited, it is only the backyard that offers the respite of an outdoor room. With an emphasis on

densification, this study eliminates those unused spaces, while optimizing circulation and ensuring that every unit has its own private outdoor room. The history of the mat building is illustrated by many examples the qualities of which are urban in their embodiment of roads, alleys, walkways, and outdoor rooms, the combination of which is an attitude towards the making of the city.

Mat Housing, Model Neighborhood, Be’er Sheva 1959-1956; architects Nachum Zolotov and Dan Havkin

Drawing from Zolotov and Havkin’s model neighborhood in Be’er Sheva our proposal is composed around a central skylit corridor, running the length of the block, from which all units are accessed. All apartment units are U-shaped, interlocked in plan, and section around individuated courtyards facing in opposite directions.

Opposing units can be connected to each other to create larger units of four bedrooms with workspaces. Sharing corridors and inverting outdoor spaces into courtyards allows for an 85% efficiency. The unit planning facilitates an aggregated mat configuration to have a density of 6 times the typical suburban block.

Collectively, the block contains several communal spaces that offer relief from the private quarters of the courtyard configuration. The inner block contains a green common for the entire block, inclusive of planting areas, dog area, children’s garden, and a lawn. The undercroft contains common parking, one level below grade, punctuated by two public arcades at street level that cross through the block.

These arcades contain the basic services of a residential block, inclusive of daycare, pharmacy, grocery store, and basic needs. The street facades are activated by live/work spaces on the ground level, offering varied ways of programming the sidewalk: studios, cafés, small offices, or other commercial activities.


THE INDUSTRIAL SITE: BIG BOX ADAPTATIONS

Of the phenomena that the pandemic has unleashed, one stands to become the new normal: the substitution of large-scale shopping in favor of delivery of basic goods. Big-box stores such as Costco stand to become taken over by the economies of Amazon and other delivery-based businesses. The question is whether the millions of acres devoted to the big-box stores stand to be demolished, or alternatively re-used and adapted for new uses. This

proposal assumes the latter and maintains the big box intact, inserting a second floor hosting efficiency units within it, with the idea that the entire first floor may remain open for light industry. Composed of small businesses, artist studios, and workshops, among other possible workspaces, the ground level is maintained as is, with large lofts that can easily be subdivided and reconstituted in larger and smaller units at will.

Big Box typology, characterized by a large flexible space premised on the liberal use of outdoor parking space

The big-box adaptation introduces a microcosm of the city into an industrial shell. Inserting a cross-grain of program turns 100% commercial into 28% housing 72% mixed: civic, light industrial, and commercial programming. The 132 loft apartments across an expansive single-story

facilitates an efficiency of 81% compared to a typical high-rise efficiency of 60%. The hybridization of programming also allows for the re-zoning of neighboring lots, allowing for the development of new streets, transportation systems, public spaces, and supporting lots.

The Big Box characterized by ceilings at heights of 27 feet allows for the introduction of loft units 14 feet in height above the flexible space of commerce, fabrication, studio/maker spaces, and light industry below.

This is made possible without the demolition of its structural system, but rather the mere addition of CLT beams and slabs that set up a parallel structural system within. This new structural system is slipped into the building as if stored on their existing racks.


THE RURAL HOUSE/APARTMENT

Located ten minutes from the Shirley train station and less than a three-minute walk from the village center of Ayer, the house embodies a footprint whose relationship to Boston is as proximitous as its connection to the nature of the Nashua River. The idea of a country cabin in the rural landscape is normally thought of as a luxury, and yet we are reminded how the social landscape of our world changed so much in 2020.

The necessity of social distancing, the possibilities of working productively online, and the dynamic nature of the family unit all point to the need for certain new forms of flexibility that only good design can address. In great part, the Rural House/Apartment is a response to this complex array of programmatic possibilities, but it is also a project about overcoming the normative dichotomy between urban and rural living.

SOLID WALL/ HOLLOW WALL: The staircase defines a poché zone of five feet, using the diagonal of the stair to define areas of program below and above its rake. As such, the house is virtually exempt from corridors, as each inch of space is programmed in the thick wall between the central room and the external skin. The exterior wall, outside the stair,

is composed of cross-laminated timber panels, forming a solid load-bearing slab structure are prefabricated off-site. The inner wall beside the stair is conceived of as a traditional stud system—hollow, as it were—to allow space for the infrastructure of the entire house: mechanical, electrical, plumbing systems, and inclusive of acoustic insulation.

FLEXIBILITY: While thought of as a three-room home, the poché spaces offer a wide flexibility, housing anywhere from three to fifteen people without much complexity. Thus, three people could as easily be redefined as three families, three apartments, three Airbnb’s,

or a combination of a host with various rentals, in-law suites, and other combinations that require both integration and autonomy. The living area on the top floor is yet another suite, composed of a long couch and a mezzanine that houses four people on its own.

THE PROMENADE AS PROGRAM: The house is also a typological study of how a single device—a staircase that winds around the periphery of the stacked one-room structure—may bring varied possibilities to the same

structure. Because of the specific arrangement of the stair on each floor, every room offers added space for bunk beds or ancillary bays in which seating can be situated in support of the room.

THE POCHE SPACE: The staircase in the peripheral zone defines a poché zone of five feet, using the diagonal of the stair to define areas of program below and above its rake.

The house is virtually exempt from corridors, as each inch of space is programmed in the thick wall between the room in the core and the external skin, beyond the stair.

The 17th Venice Architecture Biennale “How Will We Live Together?” is curated by Hashim Sarkis.

PROJECT TEAM
Principals: Nader Tehrani, Arthur Chang
Project Coordinator: Alexandru Vilcu
Project Team: Christian Borger, Nicole Sakr, Harry Lowd, Phoebe Cox, Adrian Wong

Printing and Graphics Installation: Arteurbana

Photography by Roland Halbe

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Domestic Tectonic: Translations Across Scales

Posted on May 22nd, 2017 by Lisa LaCharité

Posted under: Installations + Exhibitions, Lectures, Press

Nader Tehrani and Katie Faulkner presented the 2017 RISD Shoemaker Lecture on April 24, 2017 after the opening of the RISD Shoemaker Exhibit by NADAAA, Domestic Tectonic: Translations Across Scales, at the RISD BEB Gallery. Below is a summary and guide to the exhibit.

Domestic Tectonic occurs at a moment in our trajectory when the dialogue between research and practice has intertwined, not only in confluence, but in moments of friction when our design ambitions have not aligned with the possibilities of patronage, construction norms, or the fluctuations of the economy. The Rock Creek House, as such, does not so much represent the culmination of a form of thinking, but strategic compromise, reconciliation, and opportunism. The seeds for current thinking can be found in history, and many of the early works of both Office dA and NADAAA were houses. Taken together, the houses reveal not only speculation on the domestic realm, but also ways in which a small project may become an ‘amuse bouche’ for a larger construction.

Thus, we link the design and craft usually reserved for the scale of a home to the architecture of the very institutions that train the designers. Below are a few examples of these links as themes that stand out in our work: The first theme deals with the basic proposition of architectural composition in the context of typology, organization and configuration: each of these houses have explored the tensions between received conventions on the one hand –whether from history or the construction industry– and the idea of transformation and invention on the other. A second theme has transported each project into a research about the relationship between material units, their methods of assembly and the way in which means and methods might become transformative –formally, spatially, and technologically– as the basis for the production of new forms of knowledge. Thirdly, each project establishes some relationship with its site, if only as a reminder that architecture does not only operate in a vacuum, but also in a deeply entrenched relationship with its context, and hence a social, political and collective environment.

Below is an outline of the work included in the exhibit to provide a tour of the exhibition. The exhibition was organized around five episodes; each episode title is a link that provides additional information and context:

1 The Rock Creek House

As the centerpiece of the exhibit, the Rock Creek House represents the challenges of working with the infrastructure of an existing building, and how its history and embodied energy serves to advance an idea about resilience and preservation. At the same time, the project tests the limits of such a logic, radically transforming the southern side of the building to open it up to the landscape, framing broader views, letting in the sun, and consequently transforming the otherwise load-bearing brick wall into a curtain wall. The sectional excavations of the project are maybe its most transformative, effectively mining space out of an existing basement and attic to double the size of the house. Significant portions of existing brick were removed on the southern façade to make way for larger window sizes, and then subsequently recycled to expand the façade of the attic space: a conceptual cut and fill.

2 MOCK-UPS

The mock-ups in this exhibit are a key part of the research undertaken by NADAAA in collaboration with C.W. Keller & Associates to advance some of the material thinking of the project. Much of that thinking was aimed at organizing the house on the north-south grain of its structural walls and –with the insertion of diverse plywood elements– reinforcing that grain with the orientation of plywood laminations. These laminations then translate into butcher block stairs, picket railing, blank panel interior facades on the east-west grain, and a medium through which to organize all mechanical and electronic elements.

3- Tectonic Domestic Grid**

The grid of projects on the north-west corner of the gallery places this project in the context of other residential projects through which some of the key ideas have been iterated.

4 The Animations 

The projection wall brings the various projects into dialogue with each other through added images, and more importantly through animations that advance both the conceptual and experiential aims of each project.

5 The preface to the May 2016 issue of The Plan 

The preface to the May 2016 issue of The Plan is included as an introduction to the exhibit. It outlines some of our architectural preoccupations over the past years and how they have impacted the relationship between practice and pedagogy.

** Residences from left to right, top to bottom: Tongxian Art Center, Weston House, Newton House, Phoenix Residence, New Hampshire Retreat, Mill Road Residence, Villa Varoise (Dortoir Familial), Casa La Roca, House in New England

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In Memoriam: Professor Diane Lewis

Posted on May 2nd, 2017 by Nader Tehrani

Posted under: The Cooper Union

It is with profound grief and a heavy heart that I share this communication with my students, colleagues, and alumni of The Cooper Union. Today, we lost one of the most beloved and influential voices of our community, architect and Professor Diane H. Lewis.

Diane Lewis came to The Cooper Union as a student in the Art School in 1968, transferring to Architecture in 1970, and completing her studies in 1976. Immediately upon graduation, she was awarded the Rome Prize in Architecture, making her one of the youngest members to be honored by the American Academy in Rome. Upon her return to the United States, Lewis joined the offices of Richard Meier and Partners and later, I. M. Pei and Partners where she received her early training – this, while also launching her teaching career. Initially, a professor at the University of Virginia, Lewis went on to teach as a visitor in many respected programs including Yale University, the Technical University of Berlin, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the University of Toronto, where she held the Frank Gehry Visiting Chair in 2006. But it was here at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture that she planted her foundations as a radical and committed educator; Lewis was the first woman architect to be appointed to the full-time faculty, and later tenured in 1993. In an age when few dedicate themselves to teaching as a craft, her focus on creating a transformative space of learning will be a central part of her lasting legacy. Indeed, as much as Lewis was a product of Cooper Union, today we can look back at more than thirty years of her contributions and come to realize that we are, in fact, defined by the culture of her teaching.

As a practicing architect, Lewis set up her own office in 1983 under the banner of Diane Lewis Architects PC, and she has since led a focused and critical practice concentrating on competitions, urbanism, and built projects known for their exquisite refinement in both plan and detailing. Of those projects, the Studiolo for Colomina and Wigley, the Mews project for Professor Dworkin, and the Kent Gallery all demonstrate the nuance and skill that Lewis brought to her sense of materiality, figuration, and occasion. With a protean intellectual profile, Lewis’s work spoke to the panoramic range she held within her scope; a writer, designer, film-maker and urbanist, Lewis brought passion to her many activities, often synthesizing her investigations into the many publications she edited and authored. Her most recent book, including the work of several generations of students, Open City: Existential Urbanity is one such example, featuring not only her written work, but also her research on Neo-realist cinema, the role of the civic institution on the making of urbanity, and even book design as a central part of its argument. The practice of Diane Lewis served as a conduit for her inter-disciplinary interests, and she seamlessly navigated between professional practice, scholarly work, and her teaching projects as part of a larger commitment to the discipline. Naturally, as co-editor of the Education of an Architect, Lewis shared a vision about how the commitment to teaching was also part of a social contract to give back to society in productive ways.

Exhibited widely, including at the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Van Alen Institute, and the Galerie Aedes in Berlin, Lewis also gained many accolades such as the John Q. Hejduk Award and nominations for the National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt and the Daimler Chrysler Award. Diane Lewis was widely recognized as a consummate architect and professor. Loved by students, respected by professional colleagues and debated by academic peers, Lewis defined architecture with equal parts passion and erudition. In recent years, her Design IV urbanism studio was known for its often twelve-hour long final reviews – each one of them a marathon discussion of critical precision and clarified architectural thought.

On a more intimate note, I can only say that I will personally miss Diane dearly, most especially the tenacity with which she engaged in fierce architectural debate. Diane’s persevering intellect and commitment to leadership were so ever-present in the School, I can only imagine that both John Hejduk and Anthony Vidler felt her almighty strength in the administration of the school. She led the school symbolically, and when things did not go her way, she led a parallel school of thought alongside the very deans that gave rise to her platform. Her agency represents the very ethos of the key protagonists that a school would want inside its walls. She had a voice, she used it, and she led with it.

In the past days and weeks, I have been touched by the many students, alumni, and academic associates who have reached out to me inquiring about her well-being. Diane was loved by many and respected by all. She was fiercely loyal to her students, and she made no secret of her advocacy of the many friends she held dear in both personal and intellectual complicity. To that end, I can only see that this loss is shared far and wide by many. As the Dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, I have the honor of bringing words to the collective sentiments that I believe everyone has voiced to me, and yet, I know that these words do not suffice in face of a deep, collective grief. The presence of our beloved family and friends is real and profound, but in their absence, we also discover that their every lesson, their words of wisdom, humor, and sensibility is something that takes on even more vivid presence precisely because they are no longer here in body. Diane may have left us in person, but her presence will be very much part of the education of many architects to come, and she will continue to speak with strength and clarity in the halls of this institution. As we miss her deeply, we will also have the benefit of her ongoing guidance, the fulfillment of over thirty years of generous giving.

Nader Tehrani, Dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture

 

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NADAAA PRESENTS SHOEMAKER LECTURE & EXHIBITION AT RISD

Posted on April 24th, 2017 by Jalisa Joyner

Posted under: Installations + Exhibitions, Lectures

Today at 6:30 pm, Nader & Katie will present the RISD Shoemaker Lecture which complements ‘Domestic Tectonic: Translations Across Scales’, an exhibit on view until May 12th in the BEB gallery.  The lecture at Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center will follow the opening reception of the exhibition in the BEB Gallery at 5:30 pm. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

DOMESTIC TECTONIC OCCURS AT A MOMENT IN OUR TRAJECTORY WHEN THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN RESEARCH AND PRACTICE HAS INTERTWINED, NOT ONLY IN CONFLUENCE, BUT IN MOMENTS OF FRICTION WHEN OUR DESIGN AMBITIONS HAVE NOT ALIGNED WITH THE POSSIBILITIES OF PATRONAGE, CONSTRUCTION NORMS, OR THE FLUCTUATIONS OF THE ECONOMY.  THE SEEDS FOR CURRENT THINKING CAN BE FOUND IN HISTORY, AND MANY OF THE EARLY WORKS OF BOTH OFFICE DA AND NADAAA WERE HOUSES. TAKEN TOGETHER, THE HOUSES REVEAL NOT ONLY SPECULATION ON THE DOMESTIC REALM, BUT ALSO WAYS IN WHICH A SMALL PROJECT MAY BECOME AN ‘AMUSE BOUCHE’ FOR A LARGER CONSTRUCTION.  THUS, WE LINK THE DESIGN AND CRAFT USUALLY RESERVED FOR THE SCALE OF A HOME TO THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE VERY INSTITUTIONS THAT TRAIN THE DESIGNERS.

Learn more HERE.

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JOHN WARDLE AND STEFAN MEE SPEAK TO THE ARCHITECTURAL DISCIPLINE IN THE CONTEXT OF COLLABORATION

Posted on April 13th, 2017 by Jalisa Joyner

Posted under: _Melbourne School of Design, _Tanderrum Bridge, Things We Like

In an interview with Architecture and Design AU, John Wardle and Stefan Mee (JWA) discuss the trajectory of their practice and the role of collaboration within the architectural discipline. Read more HERE.

“THE STORY OF OUR RISE THROUGH VARIOUS PROJECT SCALES INTO THIS TERRITORY THAT WE NOW INHABIT IS A STORY OF RELATIONSHIPS WITH PEOPLE, THAT HAD THE CONFIDENCE TO ENGAGE WITH US. AS WE’VE GROWN, WE HAVE LOOKED VERY CAREFULLY AT INVITING OTHERS INTO THE PRACTICE THAT HAVE HAD PARTICULAR SKILLS, ALWAYS BROADENING OUR RANGE.”

-John Wardle

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THE PROJECTIVE ALLURE OF HISTORY

Posted on March 29th, 2017 by Nader Tehrani

Posted under: Academic, The Cooper Union

Introducing the work of John Hejduk at The Cooper Union would appear to be an easy task, if a bit redundant, but if measured by the many protagonists that emerged from the generations that have walked these halls, then it would seem even more challenging coming from the one voice whose difficult mission it would be to occupy his shoes. Now almost two decades after his departure, the sheer advent of time has invariably forced us to revisit his presence, but this time through the lens of history.

The work of Hejduk was multi-faceted; it came in the form of words, drawings, installations, buildings and, more importantly, pedagogies. His definition of the social contract came through the act of giving: he gave his time, patience and ideas through the production of knowledge, and over thirty-five years of dedication produced a “school of thoughts” that has created many teachers, architects and thinkers of exemplary qualities. In great part, that is arguably Hejduk’s greatest achievement, giving life to the myriads of voices through whom we now experience new forms of debate, architectural inventions and emerging pedagogies.

With Hejduk’s generosity came a space of dialogue and collaboration. It was David Shapiro’s words that would prompt Hejduk to give formal, spatial and material substance to the House of the Suicide and the House of the Mother of the Suicide. It would require the tectonic tenacity of Jim Williamson to situate and translate raw sketches into constructive drawings for the eventual fabrication of the two structures. Certainly, it would also require the eyes of Hélène Binet to reinvent the structures: to give light, weight and depth to them as our eyes could not otherwise see.

This exhibition brings these forces together in Cooper Square, where the Jan Palach Memorial has been installed, in the Second Floor Gallery where the timeline of its various iterations gain historical clarity, and in the Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Gallery where the work of Hélène Binet sets the stage for the work as part of a larger body. While Binet is often introduced as the documentarian of Hejduk’s work, this exhibition demonstrates inversely how she also adopts him as muse, if only to manifest a sustained and patient temporal gaze on a dedicated oeuvre.

From our perspective today, the lens of history offers us this opportune overlay of four characters whose strength of vision and commitment brings forth a collaborative narrative that sustained over three decades, while commemorating events of 1968 that sparked an era of resistance. If the social and political messages that are ingrained in these structures do not sufficiently demonstrate the ways in which an architectural project embodies a commitment to varied forms of disobedience and defiance, however obliquely, then their reconstruction can be a simple reminder of the political transitions that we are living through today, if only that it prompts us to gauge the very predicaments and decisions that surround us as history is being recast on a daily basis.

As we revisit the forms of the Jan Palach Memorial, we see in their strangeness a certain familiarity; that is the plight of architecture, as history situates—and saturates—its forms with particular associations.  But we are reminded constantly of their once de-familiarizing presence, anthropomorphic characters invented to act on the urban scene as no other architecture could, if only to remind us of other possible realities we could inhabit. But, it is also a reminder that we face this very challenge again today, projecting against a new reality.

-Nader Tehrani, Dean

The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture

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Person of Interest: Nader Tehrani

Posted on August 1st, 2016 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Academic, Press

Nader is interviewed by Stephen Hopkins in the Metropolitan Society’s first issue of Persons of Interest. They discuss NADAAA’s approach to designing spaces for education, the “debundling” of systems, the power of the mock-up, and crowdfunding. Order your copy here.

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“What we are trying to create, whether through the digital process or not, is a situation where a certain ethic of control comes into being by gaining an insight about smart ways of using materials, effective ways of assembling them, and a more optimal way of impacting the use of labor on site. This control that you regain over the built artifact is not control for power’s sake, and nor is it a way of gaining efficiency, optimization, or intelligence per se, but it is a way of thinking of the designed environment as part of a dialogue between cultural, economic and social priorities all at once.”

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Bamiyan Cultural Centre

Posted on March 11th, 2015 by Nicole Sakr

Posted under: Competitions

NADAAA kicked off the new year with a design submission for the Bamiyan Cultural Centre Design Competition (hosted by UNESCO in partnership with the Ministry of Information and Culture of Afghanistan), which turned out to be one of the largest, most popular open competitions in history. Our participation continues NADAAA’s commitment  to build a dialogue between architecture and the landscape, to imagine sensible ways to introduce a contemporary building in a historic site –where preservation, heritage, and cultural propriety are central to the debate, and to engage with oft-neglected project conditions.

The project site is the famed Bamiyan Valley, once a key Buddhist site on the ancient Silk Road trading route that lost two colossal seventh-century statues of Buddha to Taliban militants in 2001. (See BBC video on the statues HERE.) Our scheme called for an embedded building within the ground, built of rammed earth, that speaks the common language of the broader site: that of excavation. The Centre never breaches the datum set at the site approach (elevation +2555.5), the same level of the neighboring infrastructural complex. This neighboring grid extends into the site and materializes as a single wall that ramps down to the edge of the site. The wall is a single stroke of visual retention– just short enough to graze the mountain tops of the panoramic view beyond;  the wall, then, also releases the panoramic view upon entry, framing the two monumental niches at either end. The space of the museum forms the cone of vision that captures the valley, the mountains, the carvings, and the absence of Buddhas. Carved outside of the cone of vision, the building expands into a poché zone of support spaces and a cluster of courtyards that organize various other programs.

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DFALD Hyperbolic Paraboloid Ceiling Mockup #2 – Radiant Panels

Posted on November 7th, 2014 by tberesford

Posted under: _Daniels Building, construction, NADLAB

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A year ago, NADAAA blogged about our hyperbolic paraboloid ceiling mock-up, which will be featured above the third floor design studio at the new Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design.  Since that time, the client has charged us with an additional mandate:  to reduce projected mechanical energy through the incorporation of radiant mechanical systems throughout the building.  This mandate presented a unique challenge for our feature ceiling:  radiant chilled panels are almost always flat, where our design distinguishes itself through a subtle ruled curvature.

Radiant panels are widely used in Europe, but are less common in North America.  Nevertheless, we corresponded with several vendors, all of whom were enthusiastic about helping us resolve this technical hurdle.  This fall, we provided space and support to enable Twa Panel to replicate our mockup, only this time using a new graphite-core radiant panel product with embedded copper hydronic tubing, provided by SGL Group.  Twa Panel gambled that the graphite panel and tubes would be flexible enough to conform to the gradual curvature, which is smaller in degree (approx. 550″ radius) than it appears when viewed in composite across a surface.  The mock-up proved successful, as the panels twisted with relative ease:

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Rendering of the Level 03 Design Studio feature ceiling at the new Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto

 

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HyPar Mockup No.2: 2’x8′ radiant graphite-core panels on 1/4″ plywood strapping, over light gauge stud backup framing. NADAAA’s original mockup is seen beyond.

 

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In this image, the radiant graphite panels are mudded and taped against a perimeter of conventional 1/2″ thick gypsum board, ready for a standard paint finish.

 

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This image shows the backside (top) of the mockup, where copper leaders penetrate the backside of the panels for connection to hydronic tube supply/return connections.

 

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