After a few weeks of autumn and the start of the new academic year, we release a new Alumni Story! In this case, the story of one of our most successful former students in recent years: Farshad Mehdizadeh, from Iran.

Founder of FMZD Architects, his professional career began in Tehran, at Fluid Motion Studio. He later moved to work for the Lab Architecture Studio in Melbourne, Australia. In 2012 he obtained a Master’s in Advanced Architecture (MAA) at IAAC, after which he returned to Iran and set up his own firm. Farshad has designed award-winning projects, namely his Abadan residential building which won first prize in the national Memar Awards of Iran and high recognition in the Middle East Awards.

His research focuses on geographically context-based architecture and the impact of geography on architecture in general. In 2017, he was awarded as “Architect of the Year” in the 10th Annual Middle East Architect Awards, which recognizes the best projects and people in the architecture community across the Middle East.

For Farshad, studying at the IAAC and living in Barcelona was one of the most recommendable experiences that an architect can live since he considers that any student of this field can “learn a lot from this city where architecture is part of the culture”. He remembers how the Institute helped him to establish an international network of contacts, and at the same time, it helped him to forge his idea of architecture, teaching him “to speak his own dialect”.