Neil Denari on Balancing Practice, Teaching, and Experimental Design

In 2019, Professor Neil Denari was awarded the 2019 Educator of the Year award by the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles chapter, an award that caps a three-decade long career situated at the intersection of practice and teaching.

In light of the award, Archinect caught up with Denari to discuss his career in academia and his perspectives on education.

"A "both, and" approach to architecture

Neil M. Denari is an architect and educator with 20 years of experience bridging the gap between practice and teaching.

Denari’s architectural office, Neil M. Denari Architects (NMDA), has steadily completed a growing number of ambitious works that meld thoroughly digital approaches to form and materiality with a graphic urban presence, often delivering projects that act as evocative backdrops for city life in various capacities.

Perhaps the most well-known of these projects is HL23, a 14-story building that overlooks the High Line in New York City. The “supple” tower is softly contorted to the extents of the site’s zoning envelope, but lands on a 40-foot by 90-foot base, diminishing in size in order to accommodate the elevated park. The elevation facing the park is wrapped in wavy stainless steel panels, while opposing faces of the building feature blue-tinted glass and expressed structural trusses. An exercise in “how to stand out and fit in at the same time,” the condominium tower is one highlight in decades of practice by a firm, founded in 1988, that has completed or is currently working on projects in Los Angeles, Texas, Japan, New York City, and Vancouver, among other locales.

Over the years, the practice has published two monographs, including the gargantuan MASS X from 2018, while also garnering many accolades. In 2011, for example, Denari was awarded the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles (AIA|LA) chapter’s Gold Medal, an honor that “recognizes architects and individuals for their passion, talent, and undeniable contribution to Los Angeles.”

While Denari’s collection of built work has taken shape, however, his prowess as an educator has grown in tandem. Denari, who received his BArch from the University of Houston in 1980 and an M.Arch from Harvard in 1982, has taught across the country at many schools of architecture, including the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where he served as Director from 1997 to 2002, Columbia University, Rice University, Princeton University, and, since 2002, at the University of California, Los Angeles Department of Architecture and Urban Design. In 2019, this academic work hit a crescendo of its own when Denari was awarded the Educator of the Year award by the AIA|LA, an annual recognition that celebrates exemplary teaching at local schools of architecture."

This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on Archinect.com.