Zahra Safaverdi, Schidlowski Emerging Faculty Fellow
Zahra Safaverdi is an architectural practitioner and educator whose work explores the effects of the pictorial realm and imagery in architecture, in practice and discourse.
Zahra is the founder of "The Living Room", director of MASKS, and editor of its journal. The journal is an initiative that constructs a framework for young practitioners, theorists, and historians in design and its intersecting disciplines to foster pedagogical experimentation. Her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, San Luis Obispo, Cambridge, Madrid and Locarno. In parallel with her speculative projects, Zahra has been involved with the practice of architecture, working with a wide range of clients from an intimate scale of single-family housing and fit-outs for non-profit organizations, to the broader scale of institutional and higher education buildings, and to Google's campus in Cambridge.
Zahra received her Bachelor of Architecture, magna cum laude, from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo where she was the recipient of the AIA Design Award, Morphosis Design Award, and President's Medal. Her thesis project won Cal Poly's thesis prize and was featured in Archiprix's world best graduating projects. She received her Master of Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design where she was the recipient of the James Templeton Kelley Prize, awarded annually to the best thesis project. After graduation, Zahra was appointed the Irving Innovation Fellow in Architecture at Harvard University. Her teaching and design research intended to construct integration between the design studio pedagogy, materiality, methodical representation and production technologies.