Annabelle Selldorf Gives the 2025 Benjamin Menschel Distinguished Lecture

The 2025 Benjamin Menschel Distinguished Lecture will feature Annabelle Selldorf, the principal of internationally renowned architectural design practice Selldorf Architects. She will speak on the architecture of cultural institutions as well as her practice’s recent work for The Frick Collection and the National Gallery London. Nader Tehrani, who is principal of the urban design firm NADAAA and professor at The Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, will join Selldorf for a conversation about design following her lecture.

Named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in 2025, Annabelle Selldorf founded Selldorf Architects in 1988. The firm has worked on public and private projects that range from museums, galleries, and artists’ studios to a recycling facility, and at scales encompassing large new construction, historic renovation, and exhibition design. Since its inception, the firm’s design ethos has been deeply rooted in the principles of humanism, with a focus on designing for the individual experience. As a result, its work is brought to life–and made complete–by those who use it. Selldorf is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received their prestigious Award in Architecture in 2014, and in 2016, she received the AIA New York Medal of Honor. She has a bachelor’s in architecture from Pratt Institute and a master’s in architecture from Syracuse University.

Nader Tehrani is a professor at and former dean of The Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. In 2011, he co-founded NADAAA, a multi-disciplinary design practice that works on a range of cultural projects including the redesign of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Ancient Near East and Cypriot galleries. For his contributions to architecture as an art, Tehrani is the recipient of the 2020 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, to which he was also elected as a member in 2021. He was previously a professor of architecture at MIT, where he served as the department chair. Tehrani received a B.F.A. and a B.Arch from The Rhode Island School of Design and his M.A.U.D from The Harvard Graduate School of Design.

THE BENJAMIN MENSCHEL DISTINGUISHED LECTURESHIP is made possible through the generosity of the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation. This highly regarded endowed lecture series has provided a public platform for some of the most renowned writers, scientists, and intellectuals of our time. Past lecturers include Dr. Atul Gawande, Wynton Marsalis, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. It takes place in The Cooper Union’s historic Great Hall, which has stood for more than a century as a bastion of free speech and a witness to the flow of American history and ideas.