Lecture Series: Nima Javidi and Behnaz Assadi, Ja Architecture Studio

This lecture will look at the work of Ja Architecture Studio within a One to One frame. From a range of built and unbuilt projects to its mode of practice One to One will be used as a frame of investigation to rethink the relationship between live and work, architecture and landscape; buildings and ecologies.

Ja Architecture Studio (external link, opens in new window)  is a Toronto-based practice led by Iranian-Canadian architect Nima Javidi and landscape designer Behnaz Assadi, combines the rootedness of a local architecture firm with the broad interests of an international design studio. From small to medium sized buildings that confront detail-level building constraints to ambitious international competitions, the studio’s work tries to find meaningful tangencies between iconographic, geometrical and formal properties of architecture of different backgrounds and invests in inventing new architectural hybrids as responses to the diverse realities of 21st century cities.

In 2022, Ja received The Architectural League of New York Emerging Voices Award, Architectural Record Design Vanguards, a Progressive Architects Award and the Wallpaper Magazine Architects directory.

Nima Javidi is a registered architect in Toronto and the 2021 Gwathmey Professor of Design at the Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, where he teaches and coordinates core design studios. Nima’s interest in design is in the intersection of geometry, structure, and typology in architecture.

Behnaz Assadi is a Landscape designer and a founding partner at Ja Architecture Studio. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto.