NADAAA
Boston
Overall Rank: 75th
Rank in Each Category:
• Business: 148th
• Sustainability: 88th
Flip through NADAAA’s 2012 portfolio and you see a practice skilled in designing for all scales. For instance, a 600-square-foot retail space in San Francisco for skin care brand Aesop, in which a seemingly simple wall of randomly stacked recycled boxes utterly transforms a narrow, deep space into a dynamic interior. Or two new schools of architecture in Canada and Australia, both of which challenge the traditional assumptions of academic buildings with creative uses of material and assembly.
“The work of this firm is fresh and innovative at all scales,” said the portfolio judges. “Well detailed and beautifully drawn, the projects are simultaneously adventuresome and controlled within the project language.”
This ability to balance adventure with control comes from NADAAA’s attention to form and space-making. “Historically, we’ve been very material focused,” says Nader Tehrani, the firm’s principal and founder. “We look at material behavior and study the means and methods of how buildings are put together. We are also looking at building typologies and radicalizing the formal, cultural, and organizational possibilities.”
NADAAA, hailed for its innovative technology use, tempers design exploration with critical pragmatism, Tehrani says. “In these times it seems you can draw almost anything and you can build almost anything. But we’ve also witnessed a precipitous fall in judgment,” he says. “It’s not about what’s technically possible, and it’s not about the power to do whatever you can. [It’s] cultural relevance that makes it smart architecture and urbanism.”
| Rank | Firm Name | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | NADAAA | 100.00 |
| 2 | Richärd+Bauer Architecture | 97.05 |
| 3 | John Ronan Architects | 93.37 |
| 4 | ikon.5 architects | 91.84 |
| 5 | Payette | 91.11 |
| 6 | SmithGroupJJR | 91.02 |
| 7 | WRNS Studio | 90.81 |
| 8 | Studio Sumo | 90.64 |
| 9 | H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture | 90.10 |
| 10 | Machado and Silvetti Associates | 89.87 |
| 11 | CO Architects | 87.31 |
| 12 | Miller Hull Partnership | 85.96 |
| 13 | Studio H:T Architecture | 85.67 |
| 14 | THA Architecture | 85.25 |
| 15 | LMN Architects | 85.19 |
| 16 | Boora Architects | 83.98 |
| 17 | Architecture Building Culture | 83.31 |
| 18 | Ross Barney Architects | 82.63 |
| 19 | Behnisch Architekten | 82.13 |
| 20 | Julie Snow Architects | 81.96 |
| 21 | William Rawn Associates | 81.92 |
| 22 | Freelon Group | 81.53 |
| 23 | Ennead Architects | 80.94 |
| 24 | ZGF Architects | 78.88 |
| 25 | Clark Nexsen | 78.14 |
| 26 | Meyer Scherer & Rockcastle | 77.34 |
| 27 | Ann Beha Architects | 76.71 |
| 28 | Cannon Design | 76.13 |
| 29 | NC Office | 75.56 |
| 30 | Skidmore Owings & Merrill | 75.08 |
| 31 | Architectural Resources Cambridge | 74.33 |
| 32 | Marlene Imirzian & Associates Architects | 73.94 |
| 33 | BNIM Architects | 73.80 |
| 34 | HOK | 73.75 |
| 35 | NBBJ | 73.64 |
| 36 | Cunningham Quill Architects | 73.46 |
| 37 | Perkins+Will | 73.07 |
| 38 | Eskew+Dumez+Ripple | 72.21 |
| 39 | Valerio Dewalt Train Associates | 72.09 |
| 40 | Sasaki Associates | 71.80 |
| 41 | Little Diversified Architectural Consulting | 71.80 |
| 42 | Ehrlich Architects | 71.70 |
| 43 | Westlake Reed Leskosky | 70.16 |
| 44 | Leddy Maytum Stacy | 69.69 |
| 45 | Gensler | 69.56 |
| 46 | Ayers / Saint / Gross Architects + Planners | 68.15 |
| 47 | HGA Architects and Engineers | 67.43 |
| 48 | Cambridge Seven Associates | 67.34 |
| 49 | Goody Clancy | 66.87 |
| 50 | Mithun | 66.86 |
Design Portfolio Judges
Stephen Chung, AIA, is a Boston-based architect. In 2009, Casas Internacional published a monograph dedicated to his residential projects. Chung has taught at such institutions as Syracuse, Cornell, RISD, and Yale. He is the host for a public television series titled Cool Spaces: The Best New Architecture (see coolspaces.tv).
Merrill Elam, AIA, is a principal at Atlanta-based Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects. She has taught, lectured, and served as a design critic at countless institutions, including Yale, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and SCI-Arc. With Mack Scogin, she received the 2012 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture.
John Peterson, AIA, is the founder and president of Public Architecture, which mobilizes designers to drive social change. The nonprofit has built a network of over 16,000 design professionals, providing $45 million of pro bono services annually across the country. The principal of Peterson Architects in San Francisco, he was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
See all the ARCHITECT 50 results here.
