Office dA is a Boston-based architecture and design firm led since 1991 by principal partners Mo-nica Ponce de Leon and Nader Tehrani. The firm's work ranges in scale from furniture design to urban design and infrastructure, with a focus on architectural design. Office dA seizes on the ch-allenges unique to each project—the peculiarities of a site, requirements of program, material p-roperties—as the catalysts for transformation in architecture. An investigation of the potentials of materials and construction techniques, often imported from fields outside of architecture, is t-he foundation for every design. Office dA explores unique material qualities in conjunction with both traditional and digital techniques of design and assembly, and resolves every project to a h-igh level of detail. Office dA's simultaneous rigor and sensitivity have allowed the firm to develo-p a portfolio of projects around the world—from Boston to Caracas to Beijing—which uniquely m-arry local craft and tradition to a universal and forward-looking quality of design. Office dA rec-ently won first place in the Elemental Housing Competition, Chile, and was short-listed for the-- Brandeis University Rose Art Museum Expansion. In addition, Office dA has been awarded the co-mmission for an Intergenerational Learning Center, a project for a senior center, a head-start p-rogram, and grand-family housing in Chicago, and is also working on a new 150 unit apartmen-t building in South Boston, and the main library for the Rhode Island School of Design in Provide-nce, Rhode Island. The first phase of the Tongxian Art Center was recently completed in Beijing, China.

Office dA's work has been recognized with an Academy Award for Architecture from the Americ-an Academy of Arts and Letters (2002). The Mill Road House, Casa la Roca , the Zahedi House, t-he Witte Arts Building, the Toledo House, a Master Plan for the Town of Wayland and the Tongxi-an Art Center have all won Progressive Architecture Awards. I.D. Magazine awarded the firm w-ith three Awards, for the ORO/Laszlo Furniture line and the Northeastern University Interfaith Spiritual Center in June of 2000, and for the Back Bay Collection in 2003. The Interfaith Spirit-ual Center was awarded the 2002 Harleston Parker Medal from the Boston Society of Architects.

Office dA's work has been exhibited extensively. Currently, the Intergenerational Learning Cen-ter is featured in the Chicago Architecture Foundation's “Big & Green” exhibition. The Tongxi-an Art Center was part of the exhibition “Intricacy” at the ICA in Philadelphia and Yale in 20-03. Office dA's proposal for “A New World Trade Center” was exhibited in 2002 at the Max Pro-tetch Gallery in New York, and the Venice Biennale. Office dA's work in “Fabrications: The Tect-onic Garden,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, received rave reviews from the -New York Times, among other publications. The firm's work has also been exhibited at the Cente-r for Fine Arts in Miami, Princeton School of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design --and Rhode Island School of Design.