Vahid Vahdat

Vahid Vahdat is an Associate Professor of architecture and interior design at WSU’s School of Design and Construction. His primary field of research is spatial mediation, with an emphasis on virtual reality and film. He is the author of “Occidentalist Perceptions of European Architecture in Nineteenth Century Persian Travel Diaries—Travels in Farangi Space.” The book has been commended by reviewers for its “compelling and convincing interpretations […] grounded in archival and architectural evidence.”

Dr. Vahdat’s interest in the agency of architectural media extends to his studios, where he takes advantage of the freedom and abstraction that virtual reality offers to encourage utopian speculations of space. His three volume, “Virtual Interiorities” (Carnegie Mellon University ETC Press, 2022), addresses how virtual media frame, filter, and manipulate our perception of the built environment.

He is also the co-editor of “Architecture, Film, and the In-Between: Spatio-Cinematic Betwixt” (Intellect, 2023), which according to Alphaville Journal, “is a compelling, multidisciplinary snapshot of contemporary architectural and cinematic spatial design.” His “A Purple Architecture: Design in the Age of the Physical-Virtual Continuum” (Carnegie Mellon University ETC Press, 2023) is a collection of essays and projects investigating the impacts of technological mediation in blending the spectrums of reality. The book, which has received positive reviews from The Architect’s Newspaper, was selected as the best art book of 2024 by Next Generation Book Awards.

His latest edited book, “Animate(d) Architecture: A Spatial Investigation of the Moving Image” (Liverpool University Press, 2024), is, according to Refik Anadol, the most comprehensive and rigorous study of animation from a spatial lens. The book was a finalist for the best Anthology of 2025.

Dr. Vahdat has held academic positions in the US and abroad, including at the University of Houston and Texas A&M University. He joined the SDC faculty at Washington State University in 2019. He is the director of WSU’s Trimble Technology Lab.