In Hadighi's award-winning work, a glimpse of the architecture in 2020

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Services Editor

In 1989, a national competition for a proposed "peace garden" at Haines Point in Potomac Park in Washington, D.C., garnered more than 2,000 proposals from landscape architects, botanists and horticulturists across the country.

In fact, the winning entry proposed a conventional garden of white flowering plants, bushes and trees through which peace-seeking visitors could meander. Pretty. Predictable. Nothing scary or "darey," either.

Mehrdad Hadighi, associate professor of architecture, in collaboration with his wife, Shadi Nazarian, assistant professor of architecture, submitted a very different proposal for the garden.

Their proposed "Peace Armor" would employ the materials and visual language of war to produce a 160,000-square-foot metaphoric landscape in which the visitor could actually move toward, and then experience, a sense of peace.

Their submission called for the construction in wood of an elegant, open rectangular landing grounded in the bank of the Potomac. Out of the landing would rise at a 20-25-degree angle, a long, svelte, armor-plated ramp. The landing appears to "launch" the ramp into space where finally, it is cantilevered over the river to carry the visitor into a broad, open, empty, space that would alter the visitor's surround in a manner conducive to contemplation.

As she moved up the ramp toward its farthest edge, a visitor would traverse a sleek, steel surface whose flat planes and riveted edges suggest the steel casing of a battleship, tank or bomber. The surface is designed to reflect the sky above, and as she progressed up the ramp, she physically would "leave" the earth and be taken into the open air, into a silence punctuated only by the sight and sound of the river below.

"Peace Armor" is designed to physically replicate the meditative journey and to provoke a sense of "satori"-enlightenment through a sense of universal peace and oneness -by "melting" visitors into a unified sensory landscape of sky, reflective ground and flowing water.

The project received the competition's award for best conceptual design and was also named joint winner of the "Landscapes for the 21st Century" competition by the American Society of Landscape Architects magazine.

Hadighi joined the UB architecture faculty in 1994, where today he teaches upper-level graduate studios and seminars, along with courses for incoming freshmen. In 1996, he was elected by a nationally recognized jury as one of six notable "Young Architects" in the U.S. by the Architectural League of New York.

In his work, Hadighi says, he "investigates the nature of architecture so as to uncover the possibilities of architecture, which architecture itself obliterates."

Because he is, above all, a conceptual architect, Hadighi's award-winning work represents an investigation into the nature and possibilities of architecture itself. It is experimental, theoretical, investigative and architectural at the same time and, as with the peace-park proposal, there is always more to his projects than meets the eye.

His thinking and complex conceptual approach illustrate the changing world of architecture, a world that the holders of the public purse are not as yet quite willing to embrace.

It takes many years for an architect to be recognized, and more time to have his or her proposals actually constructed. Since he is young, Hadighi's work offers a glimpse of the public architecture of the year 2020, an era in which the architects of Hadighi's cohort, then in their '50s or '60s, will begin to see their work become flesh.

Bruno Freschi, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, calls Hadighi "one of our really prized faculty members and, I think, an extraordinary designer in his own right.

"He brings to his studio pedagogy a fresh and idiosyncratic approach to design," Freschi continued. "He's been a great inspiration to his students-many of them have said that to me directly-and even more interesting is that he has an architectural practice as well. That's very unusual for the faculty of this school."

Hadighi is in private practice with Nazarian. Their firm specializes in the design, documentation and construction phases of residential, commercial and institutional buildings. The two architects, together or separately, also have been commissioned to design renovations and original homes here and in other states.

Among his professional work, Hadighi counts a stint as project architect for Japan's Kansai International Airport Competition, out of which arose the design of the new mile-long international airport built on a constructed island in Osaka Bay. While living near Ithaca, he worked as project architect, and before that, as a junior architect for several school-design projects and private residences in Central New York, Ithaca's Citizens Savings Bank and for Promenade, a 12-story condominium in Sarasota, Fla.

The many prizes he has received in national and international design competitions-too numerous even to list-indicate Hadighi's prodigious gifts in several media.

A 1995 prize was for "The World Outside," a limited edition handmade book later distributed through Printed Matter at the Dia Art Foundation, the only distributor of artists' books in the United States. The book also garnered a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship for Hadighi, along with a $7,000 cash award.

Another 1995 prize carried a cash award from a German juried competition for best conceptual design. His proposal was selected by a nationally recognized jury from among 500 entries.

Both Hadighi and Nazarian are trained in the fine arts as well as in architecture-she in music, he in studio art and art history-a fact that they say informs their interdisciplinary work. In fact, they have collaborated on a project called "REALtheaTER," in which they proposed to "construct" the threshold between theatricality and reality, the actual and the virtual.

In 1997, a project funded by a UB Multidisciplinary Pilot Project grant, was undertaken jointly by Hadighi and Henry Sussman, professor of comparative literatures. Together, they explored the potential of textual space (Sussman's realm) to delineate architectural and urban strategies to support construction of unprecedented spaces in the City of Buffalo.

In one of his most conceptual projects to date, Hadighi presented at Buffalo's Big Orbit Gallery a study of "hinges in time, location, construction methods, families and behavior." This was articulated by a hinged, moving structure that could simultaneously define a specific space and hinge itself into a flat wall form.

Freschi says his students have done extraordinary work under Hadighi's guidance. They have entered national competitions that put them up against excellent architects and studios from all over the country, and in many cases have come up with at least an honorable mention.

"This is very unusual," Freschi said, "since the competition deadlines do not usually conform with the studio time frame. This places great pressure on the students to complete complex proposals in a relatively short time.

"In addition, he designs his work on the computer and is very up-to-date on the latest programs and techniques," said Freschi. "This is a terrific boon for the students, of course, and it's necessary because today a skilled designer must not only link mind to hand, but mind and hand to digital tools."

Colleagues often cite Hadighi's intellect in describing him as one of the more interesting and provocative thinkers on campus. According to Freschi, "discourse is a passion with him," adding, "by dint of this, a very courteous manner and his engaging personality, he's brought a civilizing air to the school."

"You see flashes of brilliance among young architects like Mehrdad," Freschi said, "He's brilliant, engaging, very creative, strongly grounded in professional skill, daring, full of fresh ideas, well-liked and seems to have a real pedagogical edge. He's exceptional. Keep your eye on him."