INABA

Founded 2006; based in Los Angeles
Jeffrey Inaba, founder and principal

INABA is an architecture/design firm and cultural consultancy that develops new opportunities in the fields of architecture, urbanism, strategic planning, and design. INABA brings to its work a distinctively rich vision amalgamating modes of analysis and action that transcend the boundaries of conventional architectural thought. Jeffrey Inaba received master’s degrees in architecture and design studies from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where he subsequently was co-director, with Rem Koolhaas, of the Project on the City, a research group that examines the impact of modernization on the contemporary city. Inaba also was a partner in AMO, the research counterpart to Koolhaas’ irm in Rotterdam, OMA (Of ice for Metropolitan Architecture). Commissions at that time ranged from strategic development and in-store technology for Prada to urban-planning studies for the European Union, demonstrating the elasticity of the firm’s intellectual perspective. INABA serves a similarly wide clientele, including the University of Miami, Axe Body Spray, Coca-Cola, and the Chicago Loop Alliance in the areas of identity, planning, and new product consulting, as well as undertaking architecture and design projects for the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, and Debra Rodman Couture. As co-director of the Southern California Institute for Future Initiatives (SCIFI), a postgraduate program at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and director of C-Lab, an architecture and communication group at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Inaba continues to cultivate innovative ideas about design in its widest possible sense and to investigate architecture’s influence on globalization, politics, and people.