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Sara Khorshidifard, Ph.D.

Portrait of Sarah Khorshidifard.

Office: Hammons School of Architecture 207-B
Phone: (417) 873-7371
E-Mail: skhorshidifard@drury.edu

Fall 2023 Office Hours

Tuesday
10:45 a.m. – 2:45 p.m.

Thursday
10:45 a.m. – 2:45 p.m.

Sara Khorshidifard, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Architecture
Director of Center for Community Studies

An architectural designer, design researcher, and urbanist, Sara Khorshidifard joined the faculty in 2019 as Assistant Professor and Director of Center for Community Studies, where she is teaching courses in community design and design research. Her experiences range from teaching, to community design, to integrated project delivery, to historic preservation and urban restoration. Sara’s scholarship entails a triad trajectory in Urban-Rural Interface Studies, Architectural Education, and Tehran Studies. Her background creates a balance between practical instruction and broader philosophical perspectives supported by the spans of her scholarly trajectories. Prior to teaching, Sara worked as a design consultant and senior project manager in the United States. Before that, she practiced architecture for five years internationally, in Tehran, in small consulting firm and large engineering company settings. Her primary area of practice concentrates on community design, fusing her background and professional degrees in architecture and landscape architecture. Sara has accrued notable records in such work since her doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she also served as a senior project manager and design consultant for the Community Design Solutions outreach center.

Sara’s research in essence examines synergistic interplays and symbiotic interconnections between intentionally designed and socially constructed spaces. More broadly, her studies engage in new ways of thinking about cities beyond the architectural object, contemplating other critical terrains such as the interiors, flows, and vestigial spaces. Her trio scholarly trajectories yield publications in areas of Design, Engagement, and Pedagogy. Tehran Studies, for instance, embraced speculative undertakings on the concept and design creations of protean spaces as an optimistic social space type for public use. Results culminated as a tale of research into the city’s history, culture, topography, and politics told from multiple perspectives, tackling protean spaces at three scales of landscape, street, and house. In continuation, her forthcoming article is looking at how urban voids mechanisms made by, with or within Tehran’s architectures have retained essential aptitudes for spurring embryonic on-site capacities. The Architectural Education offshoot examines aspects of complexity and multidimensionality in architectural design instruction, resulting in the Scholarship pf Pedagogy publications informing her capacities as a scholarly teacher and reflective practitioner. Urban-Rural Interface Studies investigate optimistic space-shaping concepts in urban-rural continuums, concluding publications altogether enriching her practical focus in community studies and design.

Prior to Drury, Sara taught at Bowling Green State University’s School of the Built Environment, where she also served as a faculty affiliate in the American Culture Studies program. Her teaching included studio instruction (beginning to graduate), and courses in architectural theory, computer-aided design, interdisciplinary honors and first-year seminars. During her tenure, she served at numerous lead capacities, with major activities including AIAS faculty advising, research advising and mentoring (undergraduate through doctoral), and chairing the prestigious Hoskins Global Scholarship program.

Drury University faculty member since 2019
Associate Professor since 2019

Education

  • B.S./M.Arch, Qazvin Azad University, Iran, 2003
  • M.A., University of Tehran, 2006
  • Ph.D., University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, 2014