Nader Tehrani’s residency will be reminiscent of the semester he spent in Rome while he was a student at Rhode Island School of Design, which he recalls gave him a foundational understanding of the Roman urban context. “It will also be an opportunity to undertake some analytical work of material and building systems that are germane to the ancients,” he notes. “My area of concentration over the past twenty years has been on a variety of material systems, so this will be an opportunity to historicize some of that work.”

While at the Academy, he plans to travel to the Roman ruins of Orange, Avignon, and other areas in Provence. In January, Tehrani will join the architectural scholar Nasser Rabbat in conversation to discuss “fluidity” as a paradigm for understanding the built environment of the Mediterranean as part of AAR’s series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: East and West.

During his stay, he will also continue working on several projects, including a house in southern France, a mixed-use development for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a new addition to the University of Toronto’s School of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.