Alaleh Navaii is an architect and urban designer based in Tehran. She completed her BA and MA degrees in architecture and urban planning at the Bergen School of Architecture in Norway, and attained a graduate degree in Philosophy of Mind at the University of Oslo.
She has led projects in Europe, China, and Iran with a focus on developing sustainable urban designs and balanced-built environments. Alaleh’s research conceives of humans and materiality as co-producers, collaborators, and comrades in the construction of social processes and aims to explore techniques and designs that harness a more balanced fusion of the human and object worlds.
Alaleh lectures on tactical urbanism, eco-architecture and sustainable design at the University of Tehran and the Noshahr Architecture School.
Alaleh’s first project was carried out in the Low Carbon Fair in Guangzhou, China where she represented Norway in 2013. Her tactical approach towards urbanism developed a new corridor system between the voids and underdeveloped sites of an existing urban village, Shigang, which resulted in generating an auxiliary kindergarten through local, self-initiated interventions in favor of migrant children.
Alaleh’s second project was to lead a major revitalization plan in the dilapidated neighborhood of Farahzad at the riverbank of Tehran, Iran in 2014. Representing ParsBoom Consulting Engineers, she developed and executed a two-year strategy plan by implementing urban agriculture outlines through exercising bottom-up methods to enhance collaboration and self-reparation of the urban tissue.
Alaleh’s third project questions whether Tehran´s urban voids should be abandoned with site memories as foundations of their design or should the city move toward embracing the productive potential lying dormant in these leftover sites. Using Oudlajan as her research site, she creates co-machines to activate and empower the underprivileged layer of Tehran.
Alaleh joined TUIC as a research associate in 2020 and worked on a manuscript for the TUIC101 series on Tactical Urbanism. The manuscript cuts across various disciplines in the arts and human sciences to develop bottom-up urban interventions that empower the disenfranchised populations.
