The School of Architecture opens the Fall 2026 lecture series, Intercultural Futures, with Nader Tehrani, principal of the architecture and urban design firm NADAA. 

The son of an Iranian diplomat, Nader Tehrani was born in England and raised in Pakistan, South Africa, Iran, Italy and the United States. Completing the final two years of his primary education in Connecticut, he moved to Rhode Island to study architecture at RISD. Tehrani cofounded NADAA, based in Boston, in 2011. In 2020, he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize. Tehrani is a professor at and former dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union in New York. 

In addition to an extensive portfolio of work in the U.S., NADAAA has designed projects in Melbourne, Toronto, Beirut, Seoul, Antwerp, Gwangju, Shenzhen and Beijing in China; Le Var, France; and Vilnius, Lithuania, among others. Tehrani is inspired by Iran’s own rich beauties: the urbanism of Isfahan, the masonry work of the Seljuk period, and the sustainable wind towers of Yazd.

For Tehrani, the whole world has influenced his design process.