Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Nikil Saval
Nikil Saval (born December 27, 1982) is an American writer, editor, journalist, organizer, and politician who has served since 2021 as a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate from the 1st district, representing most of South Philadelphia and all of Center City Philadelphia, alongside much of the Riverwards and parts of Southwest Philadelphia. A member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, he is the first Asian American elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate, as well as the current Chair of the State Senate’s Philadelphia Delegation and Democratic Chair of the State Senate’s Urban Affairs & Housing Committee.
Nikil Saval was born in Los Angeles, California, to parents who had emigrated from South India in 1970 to New Mexico, before later moving to Los Angeles. His father is from a village about 70 miles west of Bangalore and holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry. His mother is from Bangalore and completed a master’s degree in microbiology in New Mexico. Nikil has a brother, who is an academic.
Saval grew up in West Los Angeles. In 1982, the year Saval was born, his parents opened a Numero Uno pizza franchise in Santa Monica. The restaurant’s workforce consisted of many immigrants, especially those from El Salvador, and his parents helped some undocumented employees secure legal status. Growing up in and around the shop, Saval was exposed early to both the opportunities and barriers faced by working-class immigrants. This experience, combined with his parents' own immigrant backgrounds, had impressed upon him, he later reflected, "the importance of solidarity among peoples".
Saval attended public school in Los Angeles through eighth grade, when he received a scholarship for minority students from the non-profit organization A Better Chance to attend a local college-preparatory private school. Saval graduated from Harvard-Westlake in 2001, where he served on student council.
He graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University with a B.A. in English Literature in 2005 and received a Ph.D. in English Literature from Stanford University in 2014.
Saval was a co-editor-in-chief of n+1 from 2014 to 2019, as well as a contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker, covering architecture and design. As of May 2025, he is an emeritus board member and contributing editor for n+1.
In his 2014 book Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, Saval traces the evolution of the office workplace, from 19th-century counting houses to modern cubicles, exploring how these workplaces—and the lives of the workers within them—can be improved. The book was named a New York Times notable book of 2014.
Saval's sophomore effort, Rage in Harlem: June Jordan and Architecture, was released in 2024, exploring the collaboration between writer and activist June Jordan and architect and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller to re-conceptualize Harlem following the Harlem race riot of 1964, focusing on Jordan's "Skyrise for Harlem" proposal. The proposal featured the construction of fifteen 100-story conical skyscrapers housing 500,000 people. The work originated from a talk Saval delivered at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and was co-published with the institution and Sternberg Press.
Hub AI
Nikil Saval AI simulator
(@Nikil Saval_simulator)
Nikil Saval
Nikil Saval (born December 27, 1982) is an American writer, editor, journalist, organizer, and politician who has served since 2021 as a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate from the 1st district, representing most of South Philadelphia and all of Center City Philadelphia, alongside much of the Riverwards and parts of Southwest Philadelphia. A member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, he is the first Asian American elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate, as well as the current Chair of the State Senate’s Philadelphia Delegation and Democratic Chair of the State Senate’s Urban Affairs & Housing Committee.
Nikil Saval was born in Los Angeles, California, to parents who had emigrated from South India in 1970 to New Mexico, before later moving to Los Angeles. His father is from a village about 70 miles west of Bangalore and holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry. His mother is from Bangalore and completed a master’s degree in microbiology in New Mexico. Nikil has a brother, who is an academic.
Saval grew up in West Los Angeles. In 1982, the year Saval was born, his parents opened a Numero Uno pizza franchise in Santa Monica. The restaurant’s workforce consisted of many immigrants, especially those from El Salvador, and his parents helped some undocumented employees secure legal status. Growing up in and around the shop, Saval was exposed early to both the opportunities and barriers faced by working-class immigrants. This experience, combined with his parents' own immigrant backgrounds, had impressed upon him, he later reflected, "the importance of solidarity among peoples".
Saval attended public school in Los Angeles through eighth grade, when he received a scholarship for minority students from the non-profit organization A Better Chance to attend a local college-preparatory private school. Saval graduated from Harvard-Westlake in 2001, where he served on student council.
He graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University with a B.A. in English Literature in 2005 and received a Ph.D. in English Literature from Stanford University in 2014.
Saval was a co-editor-in-chief of n+1 from 2014 to 2019, as well as a contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker, covering architecture and design. As of May 2025, he is an emeritus board member and contributing editor for n+1.
In his 2014 book Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, Saval traces the evolution of the office workplace, from 19th-century counting houses to modern cubicles, exploring how these workplaces—and the lives of the workers within them—can be improved. The book was named a New York Times notable book of 2014.
Saval's sophomore effort, Rage in Harlem: June Jordan and Architecture, was released in 2024, exploring the collaboration between writer and activist June Jordan and architect and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller to re-conceptualize Harlem following the Harlem race riot of 1964, focusing on Jordan's "Skyrise for Harlem" proposal. The proposal featured the construction of fifteen 100-story conical skyscrapers housing 500,000 people. The work originated from a talk Saval delivered at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and was co-published with the institution and Sternberg Press.