Nayyar Ali Dada (born 1943) is a Pakistani architect based in Lahore, known above all for the Alhamra Arts Council in Lahore. Born in Delhi, he moved with his family to Lahore in the 1950s, graduated from the National College of Arts in 1964 and stayed on to teach there. His friendship with the college's principal, the painter Shakir Ali, led to his design for Ali's house in Garden Town, now the Shakir Ali Museum. Buildings associated with him and his practice, Nayyar Ali Dada & Associates, include museums, mosques, hotels, a cancer hospital, a university campus and the restoration of Lahore's historic Bagh-e-Jinnah garden.
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His best-known work, the Alhamra Arts Council in Lahore (1992), began as a 1,000-seat auditorium and grew with a hexagonal theatre and an octagonal lecture hall, built of handmade red brick over concrete in the manner of the Lahore Fort and Badshahi Mosque; it won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1998. The Lahore Expo Centre (2010) was designed with NESPAK, and the Grand Jamia Mosque, Bahria Town (2014) is a large later work.
