Cocktails & Conversation: Nader Tehrani with Nima Javidi

Cocktails & Conversation is a series of dialogues about design that joins an architect with a critic, journalist, curator, or architectural historian to discuss current architecture design issues. This program will feature Nader Tehrani and Nima Javidi in conversation over a custom cocktail.

Nader Tehrani is founder of NADAAA, an award-winning architectural firm based in Boston. He is also a professor and former Dean at the Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. Recognized for his innovation and impact on the field of architecture, Tehrani’s research focuses on the transformation of the building industry. Using “Circles & Grids” as mapping devices and metaphors, Tehrani will be in conversation with Toronto-based Nima Javidi to discuss the state of the profession in response to the urgent question, "What is at stake here?”

Speaker:
Nader Tehrani, Principal, NADAAA

Moderator:
Nima Javidi, Principal, JA Architecture Studio

About the Speakers:
For his contributions to architecture as an art, Nader Tehrani is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ 2020 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize. Tehrani has also been named the 2022 National Design Awards Design Visionary by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Working across interdisciplinary platforms, Tehrani’s 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.

Tehrani’s work has received many prestigious awards, among which are an unprecedented 18 Progressive Architecture Awards. His work has been widely exhibited at MoMA, LA MOCA, and ICA Boston and is part of the permanent collection of the Canadian Center for Architecture and the Nasher Sculpture Center.

Tehrani is the former Dean of the Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, where he served from 2015-2022, and former Head of the Department of Architecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, where he served from 2010-2014.

Nima Javidi is a registered architect in Toronto and the 2021 Gwathmey Professor of Design at the Cooper Union's Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, where he teaches and coordinates core design studios. Nima’s interest is in the intersections of geometry, structure, and typology in architecture.

Javidi is a founding principal at JA Architecture Studio, a Toronto-based practice that combines the rootedness of a local architecture firm with the broad interests of an international design studio. The firm's work has been recognized and awarded in a range of international competitions—from Guggenheim Helsinki Museum, Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, and a Progressive Architecture Award to four Canadian Architects Awards of Excellence. The firm is a two-time finalist for the Canadian Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale.

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