Nader Vossoughian
Title: Professor
Department: Architecture
Campus: New York City
Area(s) of Expertise: 20th- and 21st-century design, architecture, and urbanism; cultural theory; utopian studies
Education Credentials: M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Joined New York Tech: 2005
Nader Vossoughian is a historian, curator, and theorist of architecture. Trained as a philosopher and Germanist prior to entering architecture, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with distinction from Swarthmore College. In 1995, he won a Fulbright scholarship to Berlin, where he studied under Friedrich A. Kittler and Fritz Neumeyer. Between 1997 and 2004, he was a graduate student at Columbia, first in the Department of Germanic Literatures, where he received his MA in 1998, and later in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he received his MPhil and PhD, the latter in 2004. In addition to NYIT, he has also taught at the University of Kassel, Columbia University, and the Museum of Modern Art.
His work has received fellowship support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Jan van Eyck Academy, the Canadian Center for Architecture, and the Graham Foundation. He has curated exhibitions at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, the Stroom Gallery in the Hague, the Center for Architecture in New York, and New York Tech.
Vossoughian's main research interests lie in the relationship between architecture and communication. The primary focus of his work has been modern architecture's relationship to intellectual history, politics, and technology during the course of the twentieth century. Focusing on the German-speaking world, and drawing on his fluency in the German language, his early work used a set of episodes from the life and career of the Austrian polymath Otto Neurath (1882–1945) as the basis for investigating ideas and debates about citizenship, community, and globalism in modernism. His more recent work maps out the Taylorization and standardization of architectural knowledge in the twentieth century, tracing everything from the genesis of standard paper formats to the standardization of brick sizes and the global dissemination of Ernst Neufert's Bauentwurfslehre (1936). He is also beginning a study on architecture, politics, and infrastructure in modern Iran.
Vossoughian's publications include Otto Neurath. The Language of the Global Polis (NAi, 2008/2011), which was reviewed in major newspaper outlets such as The New York Times Book Review in addition to journals and architectural periodicals. His articles have appeared in Grey Room, Design Issues, The Journal of Architecture, and other leading journals. His most recent essay, "Albert Speer, Ernst Neufert, and the Modularization of the World," can be found in Architecture and Democracy: Histories of the Nationalist International (2024).
Recent Projects and Research
- Standardization in 20th-Century Architecture
- Monographic Studies of Otto Neurath, Ernst Neufert
- Temporary Cities
Selected Publications
- "Ernst Neufert and Bauordnungslehre (1943)" Bauhaus und Nationalsozialismus, eds., Elizabeth Otto, Patrick Rössler, and Anke Blümm (Weimar: Klassik Stiftung, 2024).
- "Industrial Management, the Staatliche Bauhochschule in Weimar, and the Intellectual Prehistory of the Bauentwurfslehre," Candide. Journal for Architectural Knowledge (anticipated 2024).
- "From the GBI to the DUB: Albert Speer, Ernst Neufert, and the Modularization of the World," Architecture against Democracy, eds., Reinhold Martin and Claire Zimmerman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, anticipated 2024).
- "Orientalism, Standardization, Global Modernity. Ernst Neufert, Heinrich Engel, and "The Japanese House," The 16th International Docomomo Conference. Tokyo, Japan 2020+1 Proceedings (Tokyo: docomomo Japan, 2021), 964–967.
- "Alvar Aalto, Ernst Neufert, and Architectural Standardization in Germany and Finland, 1933–45," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (79:2) June 2020: 202–212.
- "From A4 Paper to the Octameric Brick: Ernst Neufert and the Geopolitics of Standardisation in Nazi Germany." Journal of Architecture 20:4 (August 2015): 675–698.
- "Gemeinwirtschaft und Siedlungsbewegung." Sachbild und Gesellschaftstechnik Ed., Frank Hartmann, Vol. 3 of Forschung Visuelle Kultur (Berlin: Avinus, 2015).
- "Standardization Reconsidered: Normierung in and after Ernst Neufert's Bauentwurfslehre." Grey Room 53 54 (Winter 2014): 34–55.
- On the Organization of "geistige Arbeit": Historical Reflections on Die Brucke. Library Trends. Essays in Honor of W. Boyd Rayward: Part 1 62:2 (fall 2013): 478–488.
- Otto Neurath: The Language of the Global Polis. Rotterdam: Netherlands Architectural Institute, 2008/2011. Reviewed by Urban Studies (October 2013); The New York Times Book Review (October 21, 2011); Design Issues (Winter 2011); MODERNISM/modernity (2010); Journal of Architectural Education (September 2010); Art in America (June/July 2009); Information Design Journal (2009); Centropa: A Journal of Central European Architecture and Related Arts (May 2009); New Statesman (November 3, 2008); Arquitectura Viva (2008); I.D. (November/December 2008); Dwell (July/August 2008); Metropolis (June 2008); Derive (2008); Bauwelt (2008).
Professional Honors and Awards
- Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, University of Kassel, 2016
- Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, Bauhaus University, 2014–2015
- Graham Foundation Grant, 2013
- Canadian Centre for Architecture Research Fellow, 2012
- Institutional Support for Research and Creativity at New York Tech, 2008, 2009, 2011
Courses Taught at New York Tech
- Critical Thinking in Architecture
- History of City Planning and Urban Design: Antiquity to the Present
- History of Modern Architecture
- History of Architecture: Prehistory to the Renaissance
- History/Theory Seminar