Fine-tuning the Spaces We Live/Work/Play in Nashville

Nick Dryden is the founding principal of DAAD.  Nick is a third generation architect and is the design lead of the boutique studio in Nashville.  The studio is made up of 12 architects and interior designers.

DAAD is an award-winning architecture and interior design studio based in Nashville, Tennessee, established in 2001. We are dedicated to making meaningful human places that mindfully engage local resources and operate simultaneously as habitat and create a lasting memory.

We have completed a diversity of project types ranging from neighborhood master- plans, mixed-use developments, adaptive reuse projects, private residences, boutique retail, restaurants and corporate offices. We have focused on projects that have significantly impacted neighborhoods and help contribute to a healthy flora of the communities we work within at all levels.

We also believe that it is vitally important for the design of places for people to be beautiful, functionally effective and intellectually stimulating. We do not operate from a stylistic ideology, but rather from one that is based in a careful reading and analysis of the sites, spaces and people we work with.

While we don’t define design simply as a problem solving endeavor, we do love the process of figuring out the multi- layered complex of issues that every project presents.    We engage with the construction process in a way that allows us to provide a hands-on approach to detailing, fabrication and material understanding appropriate for each job. We have a workshop with the studio that allows us to fabricate in steel and wood, integrating design and making for tailored solutions.  We collaborate with a mix of creative people in order to make unique experiences.

Our work is the outgrowth of a process that employs dialogue and creative expression to fuse the needs and desires of our clients with the inherent qualities and conditions of the places they live. With projects ranging from affordable housing to high-end residential, hospitality and office environments, we feel this affords us to have a mindful dexterity in our work.