Interview with Architectural Dean, Nader Tehrani
On September 02, 2015, Robert Tan AR’81 interviewed Dean Nader Tehrani.
Robert Tan I read the interview in Architectural Record, so I am not going to repeat some of the things that they had asked you there.
Robert Tan
How did you learn about Cooper Union?
Nader Tehrani
Well, possibly the same way that you did. Cooper played a significant role in our own pedagogical development at RISD; the anchors of architectural education in those days had a lot to do with John Hejduk, Colin Rowe & the Texas Rangers. The kind of work that was being done here set a bar that was quite distinct, and so we all looked at Cooper trying to establish a relationship between the worlds of projection and making. I remind you that in those days, there were no schools of architecture that had workshops as such, and Cooper was the one place that focused on the project of building as a point of departure. At the same time, its pedagogy did not necessarily emulate practice, but rather, it brought the challenge of making back to the moment of thinking, of developing ideas, an abstract point of departure. At a very early educational moment, it offered a lens into the means and methods of fabrication, without getting into the complexities of the building industry.
Robert Tan
Did you graduate from RISD with a B. Arch?
Nader Tehrani
I did. They have a two step process, a BFA after the fourth year, and a B. Arch on the fifth.
Robert Tan
And then you went to Harvard from there?
Nader Tehrani
I went to the Architectural Association for a History and Theory year under Roy Landau & Micha Bandini; subsequently I worked for two years and then went to Harvard for Urban Design.
Robert Tan
Not in Architecture but Urban Design?
Nader Tehrani
Well, I entered the MAUD program, the Masters of Architecture and Urban Design. The program has evolved a great deal over the years, but at that moment the program helped build an important relationship between the instrumentality of Architecture in motivating urban transformations, while as the same time, underlining some of the broader urban design and planning policies that underpin the invention of new architectural typologies and configurations. It was a great moment in the MAUD program because the scaling up of design was something that was done very consciously, and in turn it helped to build a larger conversation with the Architecture and Landscape programs at the GSD.
Robert Tan
Since you and I grew up a generation apart, basically 10 years, give or take a bit, and you have been teaching and at the helm at MIT for a while, what changes have you seen in Architecture in the past 10 or 20 years? How do the tools we use now influence the education or the profession in the future?
Nader Tehrani
That is no secret. When I was graduating from Harvard in 1991, computers were being brought into computer labs for the first time – a very innocent use of the computers, and not so much experimentation initially but obviously the early 90’s were characterized by a great deal of subsequent speculation in the digital realm.
During that period, I was more focused on digital fabrication, making direct connections between processes of generation from a design perspective and how they impact the fabrication of buildings.
Towards the early 2000’s, the radical expansion of software, and eventually the emergence of apps and interactive technology began to define a different way of controlling the environment around us. This also enabled the discipline to go beyond the platform of representation as Architecture’s main instrument, and instead gain an expanded terrain through simulation and other technological interactions that effectively help to speculate, forecast, and thicken the plot of the design process. The architect’s ability to model structure, lighting, environmental conditions and acoustics among other such phenomena that are often relegated to consultancies could become internalized into the process of design play.
For this reason, beyond representational research, the architect’s ability to tap into sensory aspects of their environment is yielding a larger arena of control. More recent work that is also happening in the areas of biology and computation are further challenging building material performance and impacting life cycle questions, the means and methods of fabrication and a host of other issues that involve smart buildings.
How can a material be infused with insular properties, with waterproofing properties, with environmental systems within it, how can we make smart materials upfront,
controlling the nano-scale while at the same time begin to tap into big data, to come to terms with the larger scale of urbanism, the flow of traffic, the influx of commuters, knowing that all of this is impacting the way that we make buildings, cities and public spaces.
So our relationship to the research and production of knowledge is very different now. From a very practical point of view, you and I were probably educated in the world of T-squares initially; even the incremental passage from autoCAD to FormZ, Rhino, Revit and other BIM platforms, all of these suggests slightly different potentialities in relationship to how we work and how we do our research. It suggests that the only way to remain interested in the context of the Academy is to remain a student, because given the rate of change, we’re almost always on the verge of obsolescence; thus, part of the interest in being part of the academic project is to help build relationships between ideas and the techniques that drive them, between research and the tools that enable them.
Robert Tan
Since you have talked about the implementation of CAD, Gehry Technologies, or Revit, do you see a disconnect between those who write and develop those programs, to have certain limitations or expansions in those programs, limit our view and what can or can’t be done, or how do we expand? Does this mean that architects have to learn to become computer code writers and write the new programs?
Nader Tehrani
I would say so, yes. Especially since much of it is initially non-visual, requiring a different modality of thinking that can be re-connected to spatial, formal and material terms.
Robert Tan
Is that a direction that may develop in the next 5 to 10 years, or is that happening now?
Nader Tehrani
It has already happened, but it continues to develop with incredible speed.
Consider, if you will, some of the early work in parametrics. In the context of our own work, that was being done outside of the computational framework. Nonetheless, much of that work was to develop designs not based on composition per se, but on the generation of constraints, rules, and options; the designs that took form under this regime of work ended up with a clear endgame, but because of the way they were conceived were also highly malleable to take on changes, and the hand of different authors to engage them. Of course, in subsequent years, the computational potentials have also radicalized the speed with which the early work was being done, and with it, the iterative process it enables.
So part of this also has to do with the demystification of computation as a tool for research. It is a design tool, and code is not something that you should reserve for Masters education alone; it is something that should be introduced into the curriculum much earlier, in kindergarten even.
Robert Tan
I think some of that is already happening.
Coming from RISD, as freshman, you went through the foundation program and experienced the fundamentals of art and design, were you planning to major in Architecture?
Nader Tehrani
When I entered RISD, I fell in love with the environment of the arts in general. It offered a lens into the production of knowledge that I had not really experienced prior; not having had any arts classes in high school, its gravity seemed like quite a revelation to me.
As I struggled through Freshman Foundation classes, I considered both film and architecture, and both disciplines require a kind of directorial capacity. Ultimately, I selected Architecture as major but I was still fascinated by the other departments, from ceramics to apparel, and from painting to sculpture, and the “Wintersession” structure of the program enabled students to dabble across disciplines.
Robert Tan
Because Cooper has a School of Art and a School of Engineering, when I was here, the architecture students were much more siloed, with some crossing with the Arts School occasionally, but do you see more opening of the classes or the courses between the schools?
Nader Tehrani
It is in the early stages of the discussions, but I think it’s inevitable. If we don’t address it, we should be conscious that it’s being done out there in the world already, and if we miss the boat, we will not have tapped in to something that is strategically unique to Cooper Union. The scale of the schools, their proximity to each other and the ability to invent new modalities of research between Architecture and Engineering, between Engineering and Art and between Architecture and Art, not to forget the Humanities as a binding umbrella, is going to be a missed opportunity.
So yes, we will and we should tap into those courses, projects, symposia that help us do that. Even if that connection has not been formalized in the past, it is noteworthy to cite those individuals who graduated from Cooper to take on very different challenges than what they learned in their courses, strictly speaking. Certainly at RISD, I know many who went from architecture to Fashion with incredible success as much as others who migrated from painting to Architecture. Maybe what is important is not so much the details of what one is taught in each discipline group, but how one is taught to think beyond it; in turn, the most interesting results may come from the uncertainty of the challenges one has to address out there in the world, and how to translate that uncertainty into an opportunity for invention.
Robert Tan
Do you see Architecture more as a profession or a calling?
You mentioned going to RISD, seeing all these people playing and it developed in you at that point. Where other people, me for instance, learned that I wanted to be an architect back in 6th grade. So, is there a difference between someone who feels it is a calling because they knew it, learned about it, since they were a child versus someone who picks it up later, to find out about it, or is it the same, just a different point in time?
Nader Tehrani
I’m not sure.
I have a hard time answering that question as I’m suspicious of such things as “callings”. It suggests a kind of inevitable destiny and having grown up in the way that I did. under apartheid, through the Iranian revolution, and under changing circumstances in the US, I would think that we might be best served with a sense of flexibility and resilience instead…..or maybe that too, is a calling.
How we establish creativity under difficult and changing circumstances is what seems to matter, and even more so in the design context.
So my sense is that it’s hard to know. I understand there’s a person out there that has had a calling but I always imagine that life projects onto you some very different than what you imagined you were going to do, and those tend to be the most interesting challenges.
Robert Tan
Many of the Alumni in the School of Architecture are very supportive of the Cooper Union. How do you see them supporting you? What would you say to the Alumni, who have gone through this school, not with you necessarily, but are here to be with you?
Nader Tehrani
Cooper has maybe one of the most formidable group of alumni that we can ever imagine to have seen graduate in any school in the United States
They are going to be important for us. We’ve already invited several dozen of them back for lectures, roundtables, to get into a discussion about Cooper culture, how they interpreted it, how they critiqued it and how they translated it into their pedagogy, their practice, and how that’s been channeled in to specific buildings and circumstances today. Those will start almost immediately on Tuesday lunch sessions, but, I expect, if we are lucky, that conversation will be extended into reviews, crits, but also hopefully for supporting the school at large.
None of us are innocent about the circumstances of this school and one of my main tasks, is in the studio context, to translate the intellectual terms of Cooper to the future, but the other part of my task is also to underline the fiscal responsibility we have towards supporting this school.
I myself will make specific pledges to the school and I will look to the alumni as my partners; I will also look to our friends, and the community much farther than that, to come to terms with the fact that this education is absolutely like no other out there, and something to be supported, nurtured and reinforced.
With my own background at RISD, MIT, Harvard and even Georgia Tech, I am deeply aware of the differences in culture between all schools, and so it is important for me to help frame the power of Cooper’s legacy.
Robert Tan
I know that there is a fabrication lab that you want to develop. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Nader Tehrani
One of the things that always fascinated me about Cooper was its dedication to making as a central part of its pedagogy: thinking through fabrication. This also played into my own investments of introducing material exploration into core design thinking some 20 years ago. For me, it was a way of using the agency of material behavior to impact design thinking from bottom up. In tandem with this, I have an investment in how we can speak to the building industry from within the academy, to invent ways of conceiving of construction assemblies, to challenge the means and methods of fabrication, and to provide a bridge between the practical and the speculative. As an extension of this, it is no secret that the digital revolution has had a deep impact on design thinking; my investment has been in the area of digital fabrication and how it has produced a totally new way of thinking about the protocols of building: from the building of virtual models, to the short-circuiting of the traditional shop drawings, to the layout of digital jigs on site and the mass customization of building units as deployed through a project. These are just a few ways in which we think differently as a result of the way we make these days.
Beyond thinking of the lab as another piece of infrastructure, I think it must be thought of as an extension of our pedagogy and something that can serve our intellectual project. Naturally, this can also help transform our core thinking, while reinforcing the legacy of Cooper Union. As long as we can see the lab as a space of speculation and experimentation, I think it can serve as a critical tool for advancing knowledge.
Robert Tan
I have just one last question, are you a fan of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?
Nader Tehrani
Do I have to choose?
Can I be sentimental enough to sing along to “Blackbird”, while yearning for “Sympathy for the Devil”?