Ali Fard

Ali Fard is an Assistant Professor of Architecture and the Director of MIST Lab at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Fard’s work explores the spatial, ideological, and environmental dimensions of contemporary infrastructure. Through award-winning design and research projects, Fard's work emphasizes architecture's critical and multiscalar role within the territorial dynamics of urbanization, offering a timely and critical lens on the systems that shape urban life. Fard is the author of Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data (University of Minnesota Press, Summer 2026) and the co-editor of NG7: Geographies of Information (Harvard University Press, 2015). Fard has held teaching positions at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the University of Waterloo. He was a research associate at the Urban Theory Lab at the GSD and served on the editorial board of New Geographies (2013-2018). Fard holds a Doctor of Design (DDes) in architecture and urbanism from Harvard University, and a Master of Architecture (M.Arch) from the University of Toronto.