profile

Sardar Design Studio is a multidisciplinary studio for Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Design founded in 2007 in New York City. Our projects have ranged from contemporary residences and work places to the restoration of historical townhouses, to the planning of urban green spaces and gardens. Key to our practice is the fostering of a collaborative environment among team members with diverse professional experiences. Our studio is comprised mainly of architects, landscape architects, urban designers and interiors professionals. From this background, small teams are put together to best fulfill the unique potential of each project by providing innovative solutions backed by rigorous research and analysis of traditional architecture, contemporary building practices, and natural processes, leading to an altogether contemporary synthesis. Our portfolio of local and international projects all reflect a radical rethinking of the conventional aspects of architecture and design. By studying and questioning traditional influences and solutions, we strive to come up with new and unexpected programs and spaces that are better adapted to the life and demands of our clients. This is especially evident in our furnishings, which build on ancestral artisanal knowledge that we adapt to new applications, such as in our line of Kashmiri embroidered rugs, or Felt mats from Northern Iran.

Ahmad Sardar Afkhami was born in Teheran to a family of architects and designers. After leaving Iran during the upheaval of the revolution, he spent his childhood in France and England. After graduating from Brown University with a Bachelor's degree in Semiotics/Modern Culture and Media in 1990, he spent some time in India working on a film project that documented gender politics in traditional Northern Indian Architecture and Landscape design. His interest sparked by this project, he pursued a Master's degree in Landscape Architecture at Harvard University.  Upon graduating in 1995, and after researching the restoration of a historical French garden of the 17th century, he worked for Robert AM Stern as a Landscape architect.  Frustrated by the limits imposed on his profession, he returned to school to obtain a Master's Degree in Architecture from Columbia University in 1999.  He then worked as an architect for Robert AM Stern and other prestigious architectural firms based in New York City.