2019 Paul Helmle Fellow: Nader Tehrani
April 2, 2019
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The Department of Architecture is pleased to announce that Nader Tehrani, who has a distinguished record as both an academic and practitioner.an award-winning story lead, story consultant, and Writer, has been appointed as the 2019 Paul Helmle Fellow.
Tehrani is currently the Dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union in New York. He was previously a professor of architecture at MIT, where he served as the Head of the Department of Architecture from 2010-2014. He is also Principal of NADAAA, a practice dedicated to the advancement of design innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and an intensive dialogue with the construction industry.
Tehrani has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design, the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as the Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design, and the University of Toronto’s Department of Architecture, Landscape and Design as the Frank O. Gehry International Visiting Chair.
Tehrani’s work has been recognized with many notable awards, including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture (2007), the United States Artists Fellowship in Architecture and Design (2007), and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture (2002).
TEHRANI_INTERVIEW from CPP Architecture on Vimeo.
Nader Terhani: 2019 Proceedings
'Inspiring Generations of Students'
Professor Emeritus Paul Helmle (April 27, 1936 - Dec. 3, 2015) taught design studios in the Architecture Department for many years. Hundreds of students had their work looked at, questioned, discussed, encouraged and made better by Paul. He helped them to understand what they were doing, or trying to do, and laid the foundations upon which they would build careers. His constant probing for the best his students had to offer helped them in ways that were not restricted to architecture.
Paul’s own education was firmly founded at the University of Illinois in the 1950s and polished by the graduate school at Princeton. He worked in a small, unsung office in Illinois while he was an undergraduate, and a large, storied one in Connecticut after graduate school. He was hired out of Princeton by Eero Sarrinen, whose office was at the time the most desirable in the country for young, talented graduates. He left the Saarinen, later Roche and Dinkeloo, office to teach at Yale, then started his own practice, and ultimately accepted the offer of a position teaching at Cal Poly Pomona.
Paul’s work as an architect was individual and distinctive, combining the modernist rigor and historical exposure of his education with his own unique aesthetic. His outgoing personality and openness to other people’s viewpoints gave his work and his relationship with his clients deep personal dimensions. These same qualities helped him to sail unscathed through sometimes difficult waters as a member and chair of the architecture faculty. And they inspired generations of students to value his guidance and to enjoy his ebullient and charismatic personality. He was admired and loved by those privileged to work with and to study with him, and it is most fitting that his name should live on in this generous gift from one of his grateful and affectionate students. — Nicholas Pyle