Los Angeles
Email: info@denari.co

NMDA Research & Design works on project concepts at all scales in multiple design-media systems. For more on some of the people, institutions, and ideas that have informed the work, please click on the links in lime green.

Neil M. Denari’s work engages architecture as a mode of research, operating across buildings, housing, urban projects, infrastructure, speculative programs and forms furniture, exhibitions, books, and media. Over several decades, this work has examined relationships between form, systems, repetition, and cultural context, treating architecture not only as a constructed outcome but as an evolving field of inquiry.

This is the solo project of Neil Denari. For 2026, NMDA / Research & Design is not looking to hire any assistants or interns.

Neil M. Denari is the founder of Neil M. Denari Architect / Research & Design and a Distinguished Professor of Architecture at UCLA, The University of California / Los Angeles.

From 1998 through 2025, Denari founded and led Neil M. Denari Architects in Los Angeles, following earlier work under the name COR-TEX (1986-1997). Projects from this period range from houses and housing to large-scale commercial, institutional, and transportation work, developed through sustained investigations into geometry, surface, typology, and architectural systems.

Alongside practice, Denari has maintained a long-term commitment to teaching, writing, and research. He is currently Professor of Architecture at UCLA, where his studios and seminars focus on nascent AI tools, representation, framing, and the interaction between architecture and other media.

Among his many personal awards are the 2011 Los Angeles AIA Gold Medal, the chapter’s highest honor for a practitioner; the 2019 Educator of the Year from Los Angeles AIA; the Interior Design Hall of Fame in 2010; the USA Artists Fellowship in 2009; and the mid-career award from the Academy of Arts & Letters New York in 2008.

Denari is the author of three books on his work and ideas, including MASS X, a 775 page monograph published in 2018 by AADCU of Beijing. His next book, Annotated Notebooks, will be released in 2026.

He received a Bachelor of Architecture in 1980 from the University of Houston and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University in 1982. He lived and worked in New York between 1983 and 1988 and in Tokyo from 1990 to 1991. His work is held in the permanent collections of nine museums including MoMA New York ,FRAC Centre Orleans, and San Francisco MOMA. He continues to exhibit and lecture around the world.

His most recent lecture, THE SOUND OF SCRAPING GUITARS IN PERFECT HARMONY, is available to watch on Vimeo.

Los Angeles Email: info@denari.co

NMDA Research & Design works on project concepts at all scales in multiple design-media systems. For more on some of the people, institutions, and ideas that have informed the work, please click on the links in lime green.

Zeichenkorper House DU_OCTA_PLEX

Los Angeles
Email: info@denari.co

Zeichenkorper House
DU_OCTA_PLEX