Neil Denari

Architect / United States / Neil M. Denari Architects

Neil Denari is an architect and principal of Neil M. Denari Architects (NMDA, Inc.), a globally recognized design office based in Los Angeles. NMDA works at all scales across a diverse array of countries and contexts. Focusing primarily on architecture and urban scale planning, the office also has worked in the realm of graphic design, branding, and product design. At present, his office is engaged with projects of various scales in the U.S. and Asia. NMDA’s most recent completed building is HL23, a 14-story condominium tower next to the High Line at 23rd Street in New York.

NMDA considers architecture as a medium with specific attributes that are different from other art and media forms, but not as a medium whose responsibility it is to resist the influences of the temporal or the graphic, those forces exerted by immaterial or two-dimensional media. In this sense, we work with media rather than against it, allowing architecture to be engaging rather than authoritative.

Denari studied at the University of Houston (BArch 1980) and Harvard University (MArch 1982), and is a Professor at UCLA. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and the University of California, Berkeley, among other schools. Denari has received numerous awards, including the Los Angeles AIA Gold Medal in 2011, induction into the Interior Design Hall of Fame in 2010, an artist’s Fellowship from the United States Artists organization in 2009 and in 2008, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His most recent solo exhibition was “The Artless Drawing: Neil Denari 1982–1996,” a 2010 show of 60 of his analog drawings held at ACE Gallery Los Angeles, curated by Sylvia Lavin.

Denari is the author of two books, Interrupted Projections (1996, TOTO) and Gyroscopic Horizons (1999, Princeton Architectural Press). He is currently working on Facticity (AADCU), an 800-page multigraphic book on the work of NMDA to be released in 2013.

comments powered by Disqus

Announcements

Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister

Now is Better

By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023

Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.

Order the book.

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future

By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022

Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.

Order the book.

Love Letter to a Garden by Debbie Millman

Love Letter to a Garden

By Debbie Millman
Contributions by Roxane Gay
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: April 15, 2025

From the award-winning artist, designer, and the host of the podcast Design Matters, Debbie Millman, this book tells the visual story of falling in love with gardening—and the philosophies that work conjures. Spread throughout are simple recipes using the garden’s ingredients from Millman’s wife, best-selling author Roxane Gay.

Order the book.

Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber

Milton Glaser: POP

By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023

This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.

Order the book.

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall

By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022

Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”

Order the book.

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)

By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023

This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.

Order the book.