Neil Denari

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Neil Denari is an American architect, teacher and theorist. He has been the main protagonist of a technological style of architecture known as "machine architecture" since the 1980s; this trend finds its sources in the latest possibilities provided by science. The reference universe he calls on is therefore not a real one but, instead, one that grasps the technical world in its broadest sense, embracing multimedia. Architecture here is a model of a world integrating the specific with the generic, individual locations with space as a whole, and the local with the global, in a disrupted flux of information flows. His new form of humanism lies in striving to grasp the world's informational complexities through the architectural medium.

Denari received a Bachelor of Architecture in 1980 from the University of Houston. In 1982, he received a Master of Architecture from Harvard University. While there, he studied the philosophy of science and also art theory with the expatriate Austrian artist Paul Rotterdam. After graduate studies, he worked for six months as an intern in Paris for Aerospatiale, one of Europe's largest aviation contractors. Following this excursion in Europe, Denari lived and worked in New York from 1983 to 1988. He worked at James Stewart Polshek & Partners as a senior designer before beginning to teach at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture and Planning IN 1986. During this five year period in New York, Denari produced a series of self generated projects and participated in numerous exhibitions, most notably at P.S. 1 in Long Island City in the fall of 1986.

Denari moved to Los Angeles in 1988 to begin practice on the west coast and to begin teaching at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). That year he was a finalist in the West Coast Gateway Competition and the following year Cor-Tex was awarded a 3rd prize in the Tokyo International Forum Competition. Cor-Tex has produced competitions, projects, installations, and writings on the question of technology and contemporary culture. Denari has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas @ Arlington, [Shibaura Institute of Technology] in Tokyo, The Bartlett in London, the Berlage Institute in [Amsterdam], and Columbia University.

In July 1997, after a year long process and through the review of 60 candidates, he was named the third DIRECTOR of [SCI-Arc]. It is a non-profit private school founded 25 years ago by architect Ray Kappe and is currently located in Playa Vista, Los Angeles. [SCI-Arc] is rated 13th among graduate schools of architecture in the United States by U.S. News & World Report and has become one of the most progressive and innovative schools in the world. Mr. Denari is dedicated to the education and development of our future space-makers through rigorous programs and a challenging atmosphere. Due to a vote of no confidence by both students and faculty in the summer of 2001 he was forced to resign as the director of the school. He remained as a professor at SCI-Arc and also began to teach at UCLA.

INTERRUPTED PROJECTIONS, his first book, published in Tokyo, explores the contemporary landscape of advertising, media saturation and the poetics of technology in our time. This book was recently identified as one the fastest selling architectural books in recent memory as 6,000 copies have been sold in its first year and a half of distribution. He is currently at work on his second book, GYROSCOPIC HORIZONS, to be published jointly by Princeton Architectural Press and Thames and Hudson.

In 1996, Cor-Tex received its first major commission for an addition and renovation of the Arlington (Texas) Museum of Art. This privately operated museum is the only public venue for art in this city of almost 300,000 situated between Dallas and Ft. Worth. Mr. Denari's deep interest in the art world is a reflection of his upbringing (his father has been an art dealer/scholar for 30 years) and has been a factor in his successful relation with the Museum. Also in 1996, Cor-Tex completed the construction of a small, experimental space at Gallery MA in Tokyo, Japan's most prominent space for the exhibition of architecture. This project has recently won two awards from I.D. Magazine and from the Architectural Foundation of Los Angeles. Since 1989, Mr. Denari has spent considerable time in Japan working, teaching, and studying the lessons of Japanese architecture and landscapes. The drawings and models of Cor-Tex are part of three permanent collections: The Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York (acquired 1 drawing 1986), The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (acquired 9 drawings 1997), and the FRAC Centre Collection in Orleans, France (acquired 7 drawings and 1 model 1997). Cor-Tex Architecture is currently at work a 10,000 s.f. interior project for a large software company

At Houston, he was a room mate and friend of renowned author and curator, Aaron Betsky.

Neil Denari interview