Growing up, my father was a housing developer whose goal was to construct homes in a way that would appeal to the consumer’s basic needs and sell quickly. I grew up in and around construction sites, watching as ideas became foundations, and foundations became buildings. When it came time for me to decide a direction for my life, I knew that one day I wanted to be involved with buildings as well. Not just constructing houses as the market dictated, however, but intimately involved in the design and concepts behind them.

At barely seventeen, I left Iran and went to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to pursue a degree in architecture. After graduation, I started working for a local firm involved in designing commercial, residential, and government facilities. During that time, I became fascinated by how sustainability shaped Southeast Asian architecture, making it among the most innovative and sustainable in the world. It affected me so much that I began researching a whole new approach to environmental design.

After my experience in Southeast Asia, I felt drawn to explore America because of the diverse population and its own language of architecture. I moved to the Midwest to continue my research in environmental design at Southeast Missouri State University, where I was surrounded by vernacular architecture along the Mississippi River. I compared what I saw to the vernacular Malay homes and the Persian architecture I knew as a child, and soon began to discover common environmental threads between my current and previous experiences.

In addition to my design studies, I also became interested in the implications of psychological environmental design on cognition and human behavior. My goal shifted from a strictly environmental approach to creating structures that incorporated the occupant’s emotional needs into the blueprint. I ultimately aspired to formulate spaces that were holistic in their physical, psychological, and environmental impact.