Nader Ardalan Explained

Nader Ardalan
Birth Date:1939 3, mf=yes
Birth Place:Tehran, Iran
Nationality:Iranian, American
Website:www.ardalanassociates.com

Nader Ardalan (born 9 March 1939[1]) is an Iranian American architect, urban planner, educator, theorist and author.[2] [3] [4] Ardalan has had a significant impact on contemporary architecture in Iran, the Middle East, and North America as an architect, researcher, and theoretician. He is most identified with designing the Iran Centre for Management Studies in Tehran, the Azadi Stadium, and the Souq Sharq in Kuwait City, and with the co-authorship of the influential[5] book The Sense of Unity. He holds legal citizenship in Iran and the United States.

Early life and education

Ardalan was born in Tehran, Iran, to a middle-income family. His father was a member of the Ardalan clan of Iranian Kurdistan, and his mother was the daughter of noted jurist Ali Akbar Davar. In 1947, Ardalan moved with his family to the United States, after his father was appointed the Financial Attaché of the Iranian Embassy in Washington, D.C.. The family subsequently moved to New Rochelle, New York, when his father was appointed to the Iran Mission to the United Nations.

In 1956, Ardalan was awarded an AIA Five Year Scholarship to enroll in the undergraduate architectural degree program at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). He went on to obtain his master’s degree in architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1962. Ardalan’s master’s program was directed by Catalan architect and former CIAM President, Jose Luis Sert, a close associate of Le Corbusier. After graduation, Ardalan accepted a position with the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merril in San Francisco. From 1962 to 1964, he worked directly with Chief of Design Edward Charles Bassett, a protégé of Eero Saarinen.

Career

In 1964, Ardalan was invited by the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to return to Iran as the head of the architecture and engineering section. NIOC had commenced a recruitment process to bring back to Iran professionally-trained Iranians from western countries to take over certain duties formally in the hands of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The two-year NIOC contract included all paid family travel back to Iran, including the shipment of his household goods and car to the NIOC Fields Headquarters in Masjed Soleyman.

In 1965, Ardalan collaborated with Kamran Diba to design the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, which was built, and inaugurated by the Queen of Iran, in 1977.[6] [7]

In 1966, Ardalan joined Abdul Aziz Farmanfarmaian in Tehran, where he designed the Saman Center, the first twin tower, 25-story prefabricated concrete residential apartments of Iran. From 1968 to 1977, he served as the Design Partner of AFFA during which time he designed the Azadi Olympic Sports Center; the Iran Centre of Management Studies (now Imam Sadegh University); and the Behshahr Headquarters (now theMinistry of Education). From 1972 to 1979, he founded and served as managing director of the Mandala Collaborative with Yahya Fiuzi, Houshang Jahid and Ali Ramazani. During this time he worked with Ian McHarg on the masterplan for Pardisan Park and Mahshahr New Town, with Georges Candilis on the Bu Ali Sina University in Hamadan, and for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran on the master plan for a sustainable city of 100,000 people to be built outside Isfahan.

Ardalan co-authored with Laleh Bakhtiar the book The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Architecture, published by the University of Chicago Press, in 1973. The book went on to influence a number of architects and scholars interested in contemporary Islamic architecture.

In 1977, Ardalan relocated his practice and to Boston after being invited by both Harvard and Yale to be a visiting critic in architecture. After the Iranian Revolution, from 1983 to 1994, Ardalan was Principal-in-charge of International Design and Operations at Jung/Brannen Associates. During this period, his international work included proposals for the preservation plan of the Old City of Jerusalem, and winning designs for theCitizen's Bank Headquarters in Providence, Rhode Island, and the ADMA-OPCO Headquarters in Abu Dhabi. This project, completed in association with Arup, and notable for having been entirely based upon advanced sustainable design principles, led to his being invited to relocate to the Persian Gulf from 1994 to 2006 and become Senior Vice President and Director of Design for KEO International Consultants.

Practice

Ardalan Associates, LLC. Consulting Architects is headquartered and registered in Naples, Florida. Ardalan formed a research program within his office to pursue the advanced investigation of design and planning topics. The research has contributed to programs undertaken in concert with the Architecture, Culture, Spirituality Forum (ACSF). Since 2013, Ardalan has directed the ACSF research team studying the subject of transcendent architecture, which resulted in the ACSF Declaration of Transcendent Human Habitat, endorsed by the board of directors in 2019.[8] Ardalan has undertaken other nonprofit research projects in Iran and the Persian Gulf.

Academia

From 1968 to 1971, Ardalan was a Visiting Instructor of Architecture at the Department of Fine Arts, University of Tehran, where he worked gratis and directed a student research project on documenting Indigenous Iranian Architecture & Planning. Selected portions of the resulting research documents were incorporated into the 1973 book The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture, published by University of Chicago Press.

In 1977, he was invited to hold joint positions as a visiting design critic at the Yale School of Architecture and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, followed in 1978 by a position as visiting critic of architecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.

From 2006, Ardalan served as Research Fellow of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, where he was Project Director of the Gulf Research Project and, in 2009, co-authored with Steve Caton the New Arab Urbanism research publication for the Kennedy School of Government.[9] In February 2011, he joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design as Senior Research Associate to direct, over a three-year period, a 1,000-page research book on the eight countries of the Gulf, published in 2018 as Gulf Sustainable Urbanism, and sponsored by the Qatar Foundation.[10] [11] The Kennedy School later sponsored his research for the Kuwait National Green Campus Initiative, with John Spengler. Since his move in 2015 to Naples, Florida, he has served as the Senior Advisor on the proposed Harvard GSD Project on South Florida and Sea Level.[12]

Ardalan has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard, MIT, Yale, Tehran University, and lectures widely.

Personal life

In 1959, Ardalan married Laleh Bakhtiar. Ardalan and Bakhtiar have two daughters, Mani Helene and Iran Davar, and a son, Karim. The couple divorced in 1976 in Tehran.

In 1977, Ardalan married Shahla Ganji. They have one son, Ali Reza.

Exhibitions

Works

Master planning projects

Cultural & educational projects

Hospitality projects

Residential Developments Projects

Private Residential Projects

Commercial Office Development Projects

Interior Design Projects

Writing

Further reading

See also

Notes and References

  1. Web site: BIOGRAPHY . 2024-08-06 . architecture-history.org.
  2. Book: Khan, Hasan-Uddin . The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture . Oxford University Press . 2003 . 213-214 . Ardalan, Nader . 10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t003922.
  3. Web site: معماری نیوز - حقیقت معماری ایران/ نادر اردلان . memarinews.com . 2015-02-03 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150203182503/http://www.memarinews.com/vdcaiwnu.49n6u15kk4.html . 2015-02-03 . dead . fa . 2021-09-14.
  4. Web site: نادر اردلان بهرنگ مجیدی . ویستا . 2021-08-31 . fa . 2021-09-14.
  5. Book: Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Architecture . . 9780203483886 . Sennott . R. Stephen . 1st . 1 . New York . 8 December 2003 . 112-114.
  6. Web site: ARDALAN, NADER . 2024-08-06 . architecture-history.org.
  7. Dixon . John Morris . May 1978 . Cultural transplant . Progressive Architecture . Stamford, Connecticut . Reinhold Publishing Company, Inc..
  8. Web site: goodnessadmin . 2019-03-01 . Declaration of Transcendent Human Habitat . 2024-08-06 . Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality Forum (ACSF) . en-US.
  9. Web site: New Arab Urbanism: The Challenge to Sustainability and Culture in the Gulf Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs . 2024-08-06 . www.belfercenter.org . en.
  10. Web site: Staley . Roberta . 2014-02-06 . Architect Nader Ardalan: Vernacular design . 2024-08-06 . Montecristo Magazine . en-US.
  11. Web site: Gulf Sustainable Urbanism « Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure - Harvard University Graduate School of Design . 2024-08-06 . research.gsd.harvard.edu.
  12. Web site: The Project on South Florida and Sea Level . 2024-08-06 . Harvard Graduate School of Design . en-US.
  13. Reviews of A Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture:
    • Banani . Sheila . Nader Ardalan and Laleh Bakhtiar, The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture. International Journal of Middle East Studies . Cambridge University Press (CUP) . 5 . 3 . 1974 . 0020-7438 . 10.1017/s0020743800035005 . 362–362.
    • Iranian Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1/2 (Winter - Spring, 1975), pp. 87-104

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Nader Ardalan".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.