Araghian studied architecture at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran and took a master’s at the University of British Columbia, where she won the Henry Elder Prize. She co-founded Diba Tensile Architecture in 2005, a practice built around membrane and lightweight structures, and was chief architect and designer of the Tabiat Bridge — a 270-metre pedestrian crossing over a Tehran expressway that she deliberately made too wide and too slow to be only a crossing. It opened in 2014 and took the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016. Sanctions have limited her international exposure: she was refused entry to the World Architecture Festival on account of her nationality and said publicly that a cultural event should have nothing to do with politics.
