At the age of thirteen, Dariush went to the United Kingdom for his secondary schooling, after which he obtained his General Certificate of Education from University of Cambridge, a Bachelor of Architecture and a Master of Civic Design from the University of Liverpool before specialising at the University of Geneva.
He is widely regarded as one of the most avant-garde architects of the second half of the 20th century modern movement who deviated from the traditional ‘cubic’ architectural forms and introduced ‘open’, ‘fluid’ and ‘non-rectilinear’ spaces and lines in his work. He is also considered as a pioneer of modern urban planning in Iran.
Dariush created the Research Institute and Library of Iranian Studies in 1992, an independent, private, non-profit institution dedicated to research on the Middle East and in Iranian and Persianate studies with special emphasis on novel and creative research.
He has lectured extensively on architecture, urban planning, history, ethnography, cognitives, etymology and linguistics in many notable and distinguished academic institutions and universities around the world, including: the Austrian and Russian Academies of Sciences; universities of Cambridge, London, St Andrews, Bern, Jagiellonian, Marburg, Munster, Heidelberg, Freie Universität, Louvain, Ohio, UCLA, Toronto, Lahore, Yerevan, Istanbul, Sharif and Tehran.
He has authored more than a hundred papers in scholarly journals, some of which are translated and published in various languages, including several encyclopaedias such as the Encyclopedia of Urban Planning, Encylopædia Iranica, and the Great Islamic Encyclopedia.
He also proposed a comprehensive application of solar energy in the 1960s, and mass produced, prefabricated schools for Iran; he also proposed the founding of the Iranian National Urban Planning Authority, and the establishment of a Comprehensive National Environmental Master plan for Iran in 1976.