Jury Members of the Omrania | CSBE Student Award for Architectural Design
Jury members of the Award's 2019 twelfth cycle
Rana Beiruti
Rana Beiruti is the co-founder and director of Amman Design Week, a large-scale biennial of curated exhibitions, learning programs, and cultural events taking place in Jordan. She is also the founder of platform, an initiative dedicated to building connections between designers and innovators in Jordan and the world. As an independent curator with a bachelor’s degree in architecture from McGill University and an MBA from Concordia University, she previously held the role of director of The Lab at Darat al Funun – The Khalid Shoman Foundation, where she initiated a program supporting emerging and established artists, and also led the organization of Darat al Funun’s archive of thirty years of history in art from the Arab World. In 2018, she was shortlisted for the Middle Eastern Architectural Personality of the Year (the Mohamed Makiya Prize - Tamayouz Excellence Award) for her work and interests, which align curatorial practice and cultural programming with social values.
Can Çinici
Can Çinici is the Director of Çinici Architects in Istanbul. He received his architectural education at the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara and at the Architectural Association in London. He has received several awards at the national and international levels, including the 1995 Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the Mosque of The Turkish National Assembly, the 1999 Tepe Architectural Foundation Award, and the National Architectural Awards (1994 and 2014). He has been invited to participate in several international exhibitions and events including ‘Traces of Centuries and Future Steps’ within the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, and ‘7 Architects – 7 Hills,’ which was organized by WA Community in 2008 - 2009. Çinici was also a studio critic at the Graduate School of Architecture at Bilgi University in Istanbul between 2007 and 2011.
Thomas Vonier
Thomas Vonier FAIA RIBA is president of the International Union of Architects (UIA), the only global organization representing the world’s 3.2 million architects. He is also a private architect based in Paris and Washington DC. As a board-certified security professional, he has worked with public and private clients to secure commercial and institutional facilities. He also works with municipalities to improve urban security, and has led work on US embassies resulting in security recommendations to the US Secretary of State.
He also had served as president of the 93,000-member American Institute of Architects in 2017, and was a research affiliate with the Laboratory of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
* The participation of Thomas Vonier in the jury of the Omrania | CSBE Student Award is kindly supported by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Jury members of the Award's 2018 eleventh cycle:
Elias Anastas
Elias Anastas is the Design Director at A.A.U. Anastas in Bethlehem and Paris, and the co-founder of Local Industries in Bethlehem.
Anastas studied Architecture at the School of Architecture Paris-Val-de-Siene. He returned to Bethlehem in 2010, where he established Local Industries, a furniture design studio that combines local know-how with modern fabrication technologies and contemporary design skills to produce furniture and other products.
Anastas has worked on many art installations in the United Kingdom, Palestine, and Dubai, among others. His work shows a rethinking of familiar approaches regarding traditional materials such as stone and wood.
Sahel Al Hiyari
Sahel Al Hiyari is the principal architect at Sahel Al Hiyari and Partners in Amman. He holds Bachelor's degrees in both Architecture and the Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, as well as a Master's of Architecture in Urban Design from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Al Hiyari in addition undertook post-graduate studies at the School of Architecture at the University of Venice, where he also taught from 1993 to 1995. He also taught at Harvard and at the American University in Beirut.
In 2002, Al Hiyari was chosen as the first architect to participate in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative as a protégé of Álvaro Siza in Portugal. His architectural work has been published in a number of Jordanian and international architectural publications, and has been exhibited in Jordan, Lebanon, Italy, and the United States. Al Hiyari is also a painter, and exhibitions of his work have been mounted in Jordan, Lebanon, and Italy.
Al Hiyari had served on the first jury of the Omrania | CSBE Student Award for Architectural Design in 2008. He also was a jury member of the 2007 tenth cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, as well as the 2012 first cycle of the Abdullatif Al Fozan Award for Mosque Architecture.
Ammar Khammash
Ammar Khammash is the principal architect and founder of Khammash Architects in Amman. He received his Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of Southwestern Louisiana in 1986, and carried out post-graduate studies in Ethno-archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at Al-Yarmouk University (1987 - 1988).
Khammash's work features a wide range of residential, cultural, renovation and restoration, sustainable tourism, planning, and destination design projects. They include the Royal Academy for Nature Conservation in Ajloun (2014), the Feynan Eco-Lodge in Wadi Feynan (2002), and the Wild Jordan Nature Center in Amman (2001).
He is well established as an expert in Jordan's cultural and natural heritage, and has launched a number of websites on Jordan's flora, geology, and heritage. His expertise spans over different disciplines including history, geology, archaeology, ecology, botany, ethnography, and socio-economics.
He is the author of a number of publications including Notes on Village Architecture in Jordan (1986). He is also an established painter and has held more than twenty art exhibitions. His art work has been published in Ancient Landscapes: The Landscape Paintings of Ammar Khammash (2009).
Jury members of the Award's 2017 tenth cycle
Sahel Al Hiyari
Sahel Al Hiyari is the principal architect at Sahel Al Hiyari and Partners in Amman. He holds Bachelor's degrees in both Architecture and the Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, as well as a Master's of Architecture in Urban Design from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Al Hiyari in addition undertook post-graduate studies at the School of Architecture at the University of Venice, where he also taught from 1993 to 1995. He also taught at Harvard and at the American University in Beirut.
In 2002, Al Hiyari was chosen as the first architect to participate in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative as a protégé of Álvaro Siza in Portugal. His architectural work has been published in a number of Jordanian and international architectural publications, and has been exhibited in Jordan, Lebanon, Italy, and the United States. Al Hiyari is also a painter, and exhibitions of his work have been mounted in Jordan, Lebanon, and Italy.
Al Hiyari had served on the first jury of the Omrania | CSBE Student Award for Architectural Design in 2008. He also was a jury member of the 2007 tenth cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, as well as the 2012 first cycle of the Abdullatif Al Fozan Award for Mosque Architecture.
Hanif Kara
Hanif Kara is a structural engineer, and is the design director and co-founder of AKT II in London. He is also a Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and has taught at various architectural schools in Britain, Europe, and the United States.
His constructed work is recognized as being "design led" and intrinsically linked with applied research and education. This has allowed him to work on award-winning pioneering projects with leading architects and clients.
Kara’s career extends beyond the structural engineering disciplines and led to him receiving the UK ACE Engineering Ambassador Award in 2011. He also has published widely on interdisciplinary design.
Kara is a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Institute of Civil Engineers, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Structural Engineering, and the Royal Society of Arts. He is also on the board of trustees of the Architecture Foundation.
Kara had served as a jury member of the fourth cycle of the Omrania | CSBE Student Award for Architectural Design in 2011. He also was a jury member of the 2004 ninth cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and a Steering Committee member of its 2016 thirteenth cycle.
The participation of Hanif Kara in the jury of the Omrania | CSBE Student Award is kindly supported by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Han Tümertekin
Han Tümertekin is the principal architect and founder of Mimarlar ve Han Tümertekin in Istanbul, and Atelier Han Tümertekin in Strasbourg. He studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University, and completed his graduate studies in historic preservation at the University of Istanbul.
His work includes residential, commercial, and institutional projects, primarily in Turkey, as well as in The Netherlands, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, China, Mongolia, and Kenya. In addition to his built work, he has taught architecture at universities including Harvard, Istanbul Technical University, and the École d'Architecture in Strasbourg. Tümertekin’s work also has been widely published in international architectural journals.
Tumertekin had served as a jury member of the first cycle of the Omrania | CSBE Student Award for Architectural Design in 2011. He also was a jury member of the 2007 tenth cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and a Steering Committee member of its 2010 and 2013 eleventh and twelfth cycles.
Jury members of the Award's 2016 ninth cycle
Róisín Heneghan
Róisín Heneghan is an Irish architect and designer. She is cofounder of Heneghan Peng Architects along with Shi-Fu Peng. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University College of Dublin, and her Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University.
She has taught at numerous institutions including University College Dublin, Cornell, MIT, Yale, and Harvard.
She won the Architectural League Prize (previously known as the Young Architects Forum) in 1999, and was nominated twice (in 2015 and 2013) for the RIBA Stirling Prize.
Heneghan's numerous projects include the Grand Egyptian Museum, Palestinian Museum, Giant's Causeway Visitors' Centre, Central Park Bridges at the London Olympic Park, School of Architecture at the University of Greenwich, and the Canadian Canoe Museum.
Ammar Khammash
Ammar Khammash is the principal architect and founder of Khammash Architects in Amman. He received his Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of Southwestern Louisiana in 1986, and carried out post-graduate studies in Ethno-archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at Al-Yarmouk University (1987 - 1988).
Khammash's work features a wide range of residential, cultural, renovation and restoration, sustainable tourism, planning, and destination design projects. They include the Royal Academy for Nature Conservation in Ajloun (2014), the Feynan Eco-Lodge in Wadi Feynan (2002), and the Wild Jordan Nature Center in Amman (2001).
He is well established as an expert in Jordan's cultural and natural heritage, and has launched a number of websites on Jordan's flora, geology, and heritage. His expertise spans over different disciplines including history, geology, archaeology, ecology, botany, ethnography, and socio-economics.
He is the author of a number of publications including Notes on Village Architecture in Jordan (1986). He is also an established painter and has held more than twenty art exhibitions. His art work has been published in Ancient Landscapes: The Landscape Paintings of Ammar Khammash (2009).
Mohsen Mostafavi
An architect and educator, Mohsen Mostafavi is the Dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design. He was formerly
Dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University, and Chairman of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.
He has taught at numerous institutions including the University of Pennsylvania, University of Cambridge, and the Frankfurt Academy of Fine Arts (Städelschule). Dean Mostafavi also has served on the steering committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the design committees of the London Development Agency (LDA) and the RIBA Gold Medal.
He has edited and co-edited a number of publications, the more recent of which include Ecological Urbanism (2010, and recently translated into Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish); Implicate & Explicate (2011); Louis Vuitton: Architecture and Interiors (2011); In the Life of Cities (2012); Instigations: Engaging Architecture, Landscape, and the City (2012); Architecture Is Life (2013); Nicholas Hawksmoor: The London Churches (2015); and the forthcoming Ethics of the Urban: The City and the Spaces of the Political.
Jury members of the Award's 2015 eighth cycle
Hani Imam Hussaini
Hani Hussaini is the founder and director of Almarsam Architects & Engineers in Amman. He received his architectural education from the University of Cambridge, where he obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degrees, as well as his Diploma in Architecture.
He practiced architecture in the United Kingdom, both independently and at the London practice of Panter Hudspith Architects. He was a Partner and Head of Architecture at Omrania & Associates, and director of its Jordan office. Apart from Jordan and the United Kingdom, he has been involved in projects in Greece, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and the West Bank. His experience spans a wide variety of sectors that include offices, residential, commercial, retail, leisure, hospitality, and sports projects.
Hussaini is a founding member of the Center for the Study of the Built Environment (CSBE), and continues to serve as a member of the Board of Directors. While at Omrania, he was instrumental in establishing the Omrania | CSBE Student Award in Architectural Design.
Josep Lluís Mateo
Joseph Lluís Mateo is the founder of the architectural practice mateoarquitectura in Barcelona, and Professor of Architecture and Design at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. He studied architecture at the Barcelona School of Architecture, and holds a PhD from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He also has been a Visiting Professor in Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
Mateo is a member of l’Ordre des Architectes de Paris, the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA) in Zürich, and the Catalan Professional Architectural Association (COAC) in Barcelona.
He has designed numerous award winning projects. These include the urbanization of Ullastret (Spain), the Amsterdam Housing Block, the Barcelona Convention Center, “The Factory” office building in Paris, the PGGM Headquarters in Zeist (The Netherlands), the Cinematheque of Catalonia, the Cultural Center and Urban development of Castelo Branco (Portugal), and the remodeling of the Ninot Market in Barcelona.
Publications devoted to his work include Josep Lluís Mateo, Opere e progetti (2007) and On Building: Matter and Form (2012). Exhibits of his work have been organized at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Galerie d’Architecture in Paris.
Mateo is also the author of a number of publications including Bauen und Denken (2002), Textos Instrumentales (2007), and Middle East: Contemporary Architectural Conditions (2012).
Nader Tehrani
Nader Tehrani the Dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union in New York City and Principal of the Boston-based architectural practice NADAAA. He also was a Professor and Head of the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Moreover, he has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he served as the Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design, and the University of Toronto as the Frank O. Gehry International Visiting Chair.
He received a Bachelors of Fine Arts and a Bachelors of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design, and continued his studies at the Architectural Association, where he attended the Post-Graduate program in History and Theory. Following that, he received his Masters in Architecture and Urban Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Tehrani's numerous projects include the design of three schools of architecture. He has completed the Hinman Research Building at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, and is currently working on completion of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.
His work has been recognized with notable awards including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture, the United States Artists Fellowship in Architecture and Design, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture. He has also received the Harleston Parker Award for the Northeastern University Multi-faith Spiritual Center and the Hobson Award for the Georgia Institute of Technology Hinman Research Building. Throughout his career, Tehrani has received sixteen Progressive Architecture Awards as well as numerous American Institute of Architects, Boston Society of Architects, and Interior Design awards. In 2013 and 2014, NADAAA was ranked no. 1 in design by Architect Magazine's Top 50 Firms in the United States.
Tehrani's work has been widely published and has also been widely exhibited at various venues including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. His work is also part of the permanent collection of the Canadian Center for Architecture and the Nasher Sculpture Center.
The jury will evaluate the submissions on their stand-alone merit. In doing so, issues such as clarity of presentation, creativity, design excellence, social responsiveness, function and program, etc. will be taken into account.
The jury’s decision will be final, and the jury has the right to decide on the number of winners and on the distribution of the prize money among them.
Jury members of the Award’s 2014 seventh cycle
Emre Arolat
Emre Arolat is the founding partner of EAA - Emre Arolat Architects in Istanbul. He studied architecture at Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul, where he earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Before founding EAA in 2004 with Gonca Paşolar, he had worked at Arolat Architectsand at Metcalf and Associates in Washington, D.C. Emre Arolat has taught in architectural schools in Turkey and abroad, including Mimar SinanUniversity, Istanbul Bilgi University, The Berlage Institute for Architecture in Rotterdam, and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). His workhas been extensively published, most recently in Philip Jodidio and Suha Ozkan, Emre Arolat Architects: Context and Plurality (New York: Rizzoli, 2013). He also was the curator of the First Istanbul Design Biennale in 2012.
Saad El Kabbaj
Saad El Kabbaj has had his own practice in Casablanca since 2005. He studied architecture at the National School of Architecture in Rabat, where he graduated in 2003. Saad El Kabbaj has been a consultant for the implementation of an urban and architectural development plan for the central area of Medina in Saudi Arabia. Also, his work has been published in numerous international architecture magazines, and has been featured in exhibitions in Paris, New York, and Venice.
Senan Abdelqader
Senan Abdelqader is the founder and principal of Senan Abdelqader Architects (SAA), which he established in 1994. The firm’s Jerusalem office was opened in 2006, and the Ramallah office in 2014. He studied architecture at the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany. He has taught at a number of institutions including the Dessau Institution of Architecture (DIA) in Germany, where he led graduate courses on Informal urbanism. In addition, he has been featured in a number of international newspapers including The New York Times and The Guardian.
Jury members of the Award’s 2013 sixth cycle
Shahira Fahmy
Shahira Fahmy is the founder of Shahira Fahmy Architects, which she established in Cairo in 2005. She studied architecture at Cairo University and taught there from 1997 to 2007. Her work includes architectural and master planning projects, as well as product design projects. She worked on the new campus for the American University in Cairo in 2005 with Legorreta + Legorreta, Abdel Halim Ibrahim, and Sasaki Associates; and she participated, in collaboration with the Dutch photographer Bas Princen, in the 2012 exhibition HOME: Contemporary Architectural Interpretations of the Home in the Arab world, which was presented by the Museum of Architecture in London. She currently is involved in the architectural expansion of the Delfina Foundation headquarters in London in collaboration with the London-based Studio Octopi.
Shaira Fahmy’s work has been cited in international journals and magazines including The New York Times Magazine, The Architects' Journal, The Architectural Review, and The Financial Times. She also was awarded the Bibliotheca Alexandrina Young Architect Award in 2005, and was a recipient of The Green Good Design Award by the Chicago Athenaeum in 2010.
Bernard Khoury
Bernard Khoury is the founder of the architectural office DW5 / Bernard Khoury, which he established in Beirut in 1993. He studied architecture at the Rhode Island school of Design and at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. His work features a wide range of residential, commercial, institutional, entertainment, and multi-use development projects. They include Centrale Restaurant in Beirut (2001), the IB3 residential building, also in Beirut (2006), '7' Club in Doha (2010), and the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies in Yerevan, Armenia (2011).
Bernard Khoury's work has been exhibited internationally. A solo show of his work was held at the International Forum for Contemporary Architecture at the Aedes Gallery in Berlin in 2003, and his work has been featured in group exhibitions including YOUprison at the Fondazione Sandretto in Torino in 2008, and SPACE at the opening of the MAXXI museum in Rome in 2010.
He is the recipient of a number of awards including an honorable mention in 2001 from the Borromini Prize, which is given to architects under 40 years of age by the Municipality of Rome, and the Architecture + Award in 2004. He also taught as a visiting professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris, and the American University of Beirut.
Murat Tabanlıoğlu
Murat Tabanlıoğlu is the co-founder of Tabanlıoğlu Architects, which he established with Hayati Tabanlıoğlu in Istanbul in 1990. He studied architecture at Vienna Technical University. His work has included a wide range of building types and projects such as the Istanbul Modern Art Museum in Istanbul (2004), the Loft Gardens residential building in Istanbul (2007), the Astana Arena in Astana, Kazakhstan (2007), the SAS Company Headquarters in Istanbul (2010), the renovation of Cankaya Mosque in Ankara (2011), and Bodrum International Airport (2012).
Murat Tabanlıoğlu’s work has been featured in international exhibitions including A Snapshot of Contemporary Turkish Architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts, which was held in London in 2005, and Seven Architects from Seven Hills, which was held in a number of cities including Berlin in 2009.
He is the recipient of a number of awards including Architect of the Year of the Middle East Architect Awards in 2010, and a RIBA International Award in 2011 for designing the Loft Gardens residential building. In addition to his atelier program at Istanbul Bilgi University, he has lectured at numerous universities around the world. He also has been a member of the Master Jury of the 2013 cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Jury members of the Award’s 2012 fifth cycle
Khaled Omar Azzam
Khaled Azzam is the Director of The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London. He is an architect by training and maintains his practice through offices in Cairo and Jeddah. He has built houses, schools, mosques, offices, and commercial buildings.
In 1999, he became the Director of The Visual Islamic and Traditional Arts (VITA) Program at The Prince’s Foundation in London. At VITA, he was involved in developing the postgraduate MA and PhD program and carrying out an outreach program that included projects with schools such as the National College of Arts in Lahore, The Arab Academy in Cairo, and the College of Traditional Islamic Arts at Al Balqah University in Amman, Jordan.
In 2003, HRH The Prince of Wales established The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts and asked Dr. Azzam to become its first Director. Through this initiative, he facilitated the enlargement of the VITA educational program and also integrated the School’s education program with the need for awakening the social, spiritual, and economic lifelines of communities through an Outreach Education Program. These initiatives have reached communities in locations as diverse as Rose Town, Jamaica, Kano, Nigeria, Abu Dhabi, and Beijing.
In 2009, Her Majesty the Queen awarded Dr Azzam the title of Lieutenant of the Victoria Order. In 2010, he was privileged to address His Holiness Pope Benedict VI on behalf of the Muslim community at a gathering of London’s Faith communities.
Farrokh Derakhshani
Farrokh Derakhshani is Director of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. He has been associated with the Award since 1982, where his work has brought him into contact with architects, builders, and planners throughout the world. He travels extensively in Muslim countries, and has organised and participated in numerous international seminars and colloquia dealing with contemporary built environments. He has collaborated on a large variety of publications and exhibitions on architecture, and has been involved in organising professional workshops and international architectural competitions. He lectures widely and has served as a jury member at schools of architecture in Europe, Africa and Asia. Mr. Derakhshani’s main field of specialisation is the contemporary architecture of Muslim societies, and his professional work has included the design and construction management of large-scale public works and infrastructure projects in Iran, as well as architectural design in Paris and Geneva. He is trained as an architect at the National University of Iran and later continued his studies at the School of Architecture in Paris (UP1).
Ahmad Humeid
Ahmad Humeid is a designer/design advocate, blogger and web entrepreneur, and the CEO of SYNTAX, a brand, design and innovation firm. He started his first design studio in 1991 while studying architecture at the University of Jordan. In the 1990s he led design and technology efforts at various pioneering publishing, consulting and web ventures in the Arab region, including BYTE Middle East Magazine and Arabia.com, the region's first web portal. In 2005 he cofounded TootCorp, a web venture lab that launched the pioneering Arab video portal ikbis.com and other web ventures. Soon after, he cofounded Spring, a web and mobile technology development company that focuses on serving the emerging technology startup scene in the region.
In 2011 he launched the design advocacy initiative ReDesign Arabia, which aims at elevating the social role of design and designers as agents of positive change and human-centered innovation in the Arab region.
Living on the web since the advent of the commercial internet in 1994, he has been a regular blogger on his blog 360east.com, one of Jordan's first blogs, focusing on design, technology, media and urban culture in the region. Nowadays he can be more often read on twitter @humeid and on Facebook.
Ahmad is a member of Diwan al Mimar, an architectural forum that meets regularly in Amman. He also spoke in various regional and global conference and forums on design, media and technology.
Jury members of the Award’s 2011 fourth cycle
Nabil Gholam
Nabil Gholam is a Lebanese architect and founder of Nabil Gholam Architects. He studied architecture at the Ecole d'Architecture Paris – Villemin, and pursued a master's in urban planning at Columbia University in New York. He started his career with Ricardo Bofill, where he became Senior Partner in charge of international projects. By the time he established Nabil Gholam Architecture and Planning in Beirut in 1994, he had worked in France, Spain, China, and the United States. Since then, the office (renamed Nabil Gholam Architects (ngª)) has grown to include an international multidisciplinary team of architects, planners, designers, and consultants. In addition to its Beirut office, the practice has a European office in Seville.
Hanif Kara
Hanif Kara is a practicing Structural Engineer, the Pierce Anderson Lecturer in Creative Engineering at the Harvard School of Design, and Visiting Professor for Architectural Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden since 2008.
His constructed work is recognized as being linked with the research and education areas of design. He has been teaching at various architectural schools in Britain, Europe, and the United States since 1996. He co-tutored a Diploma Unit at the Architectural Association in London from 2000 to 2004, acted as a consultant for the Design Research Lab (DRL) for a number of years, and was an external examiner from 2005 to 2008.
As Design Director and co-founder of AKT II (established in 1996), his particular ‘design-led’ approach and interest in innovative form, material uses, prefabrication, sustainable construction, and complex analysis methods have allowed him to work on award-winning pioneering projects.
His career extends beyond the structural engineering disciplines and led to his appointment as a commissioner for CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment). He is the first engineer to hold this post for the government watchdog that monitors the quality of design throughout the United Kingdom. In 2007, he was appointed as one of 15 members of the Design for London Advisory Group to the Mayor of London.
He was selected for the Master Jury of the 2004 cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and served as a project reviewer for the Award in 2007 and 2010. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2007. In addition, Hanif will be the first Engineer to serve as a judge for the annual coveted RIBA Stirling Prize (2011). He is also on the board of trustees of the Architecture Foundation.
Hazel Wong
Hazel Wong is the Executive Director and Design Principal of WSW Architects, her architectural and engineering practice in Dubai. A long standing member of the Ontario Association of Architects and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, she received her Bachelor of Architecture from Carleton University in Ottawa, and her Master of Architecture in Advanced Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Her numerous designs include the Abu Dhabi International Exhibition Center, the UAE Civil Aviation Headquarters, and, most notably, the Emirates Towers in Dubai, the twin iconic high-rise structures housing office, hotel and retail space. At the time of their completion in 2000, the Emirates Towers ranked amongst the ten tallest buildings in the world. For many years, she was the Design Director of NORR Group in the United Arab Emirates, and, more recently, the Regional Director of RMJM for the Middle East, where she was responsible for the creation of a number of large-scale mixed-use projects including the Dubai Towers in Doha and the Dubai Towers and Lamar Towers in Jeddah.
Jury members of the Award’s 2010 third cycle
Omar Hallaj
Omar Hallaj is an architect and a development consultant, and the CEO of the Syria Trust for Development. He holds his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture from the University of Texas. He has researched and lectured on a variety of issues related to the history, economics, and politics of architecture in the Muslim world.
His professional work has closely concentrated on linking social and economic development concerns to the production of architecture and the preservation of urban heritage. His experience includes serving on public commissions related to urban development and conservation issues, developing administrative and legal frameworks for heritage conservation, and involving private and non-governmental efforts in urban management. He served as the Team Leader for the German Technical Cooperation Project for the Development of Historic Cities in Yemen. He was also a partner is Suradec, a consortium for urban and urban heritage planning in Aleppo, Syria. In addition, he was a recipient of the 2007 cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture as Team Leader for the Yemeni-German Shibam Urban Development Project.
Nadim Karam
Nadim Karam is the principal architect of Hapsitus Architects. He holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the American University of Beirut, and a master’s degree and a PhD in architecture from the University of Tokyo. He taught at the Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo in 1992, and at the American University of Beirut from 1993 to 1995, and from 2003 to 2004. He was Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Art, and Design at Notre Dame University in Lebanon from 2000 - 2003, when he also curated Lebanon’s participation in the first Rotterdam Biennale of architecture.
With Hapsitus, the pluri-disciplinary company he founded in Beirut, Nadim Karam has realized large-scale, temporary and permanent urban art projects in different cities, including Beirut, Kwangju, Prague, London, Tokyo, Nara, and Melbourne. Karam’s 1997 - 2000 urban art project for central Beirut was one of five worldwide projects selected by the Van Alen Institute in New York in 2002 to highlight the role they played in rejuvenating city life and morale after a disaster. He also received three Australian awards for his 2006 Victoria State commission ‘The Travellers’, a permanent art installation of ten three-storey high moving sculptures. His current projects include the Cloud of Dubai, conceived as a visual and social antithesis to the plethora of skyscrapers in Gulf cities, and urban art projects in Seoul and Amman.
Nadim Karam is also an artist whose paintings and sculptures are regularly exhibited. His installation ‘The Fisherman & the Cloud’ is currently exhibited at the Washington University Museum. Three books on his works have been published by Booth-Clibborn Editions, London: VOYAGE (2000), Urban Toys (2006), and The Cloud, the Desert and the Arabian Breeze (2007).
Suha Özkan
Suha Özkan is a professor of architecture at Middle East Technical University (METU), Turkey, and the Founding Chairman of World Architecture Community (WAC), a Geneva and Istanbul-based international consultancy company, and an internet-based interactive world-wide architecture and planning community. He studied architecture at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, and theory of design at the Architectural Association in London. In addition to teaching at METU, he served as associate dean of its Faculty of Architecture in 1978, and was appointed vice-president of the university from 1979 to 1982. In 1983, he was appointed Deputy Secretary General of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in Geneva, and he served as the Award’s Secretary General from 1990 to 2006.
He was the initiator and leader of the XXI Architectural Culture Centre in Ankara and its journal XXI. He also served as a member of the jury for the architectural competition for the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial in Washington, D.C. In addition, he chaired the selection process of the Rolex Master Protégé Programme in Geneva, and was a member of the European Union Prize for Architecture, Barcelona.
He was the President of International Union of Architects’ (UIA) XXII Congress, which was held in Istanbul in 2005. He also chaired the UIA’s Scientific Committee between 2002 and 2005, and was a member of its Competitions Committee between 2002 and 2007.
In 2004, American Institute of Architects awarded him the Medal of Honorary Fellow (Hon. F.A.I.A), and the Russian Union of Architects awarded him their Gold Medal.
Özkan has authored more than 200 articles and monographs in English and Turkish. A number of his writings have been translated into French, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic.
Jury members of the Award’s 2009 second cycle
Vladimir Djurovic
Vladimir Djurovic is a landscape architect and founder of Vladimir Djurovic Landscape Architecture. He received his Undergraduate Degree in Horticulture from Reading University in England in 1989, and his Masters Degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Georgia in the United States in 1992. After working with the design firm EDAW in Atlanta, he headed back to Lebanon in 1995 to establish his landscape architectural practice.
Vladimir Djurovic Landscape Architecture is the recipient of a number of awards including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2007, the Cityscape Architectural Review Awards, the International Design Awards, and the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) 2007 Award of Excellence and 2008 Award of Honor. The office also participated and won several international competitions including Freedom Park South Africa and the Ismaili Centre and Aga Khan Museum landscape architectural competition in Toronto. In addition, Vladimir Djurovic has lectured at various universities including the Architectural Association of Ireland, Imperial College in London, and Harvard University, and has served as jury member for several design awards and competitions including the ASLA 2009 Professional Awards.
Saleh Al-Hathloul
Saleh Al-Hathloul is a Saudi Arabian educator and a critic in the field of architecture and urban planning with interests in the epistemology of knowledge, the general issues of structural changes in society, and futurist studies. He obtained his master's degree in Urban Design (MAUD) from Harvard University in 1975 and his Ph.D. in Architecture and Environmental Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981. He was chairman of the Department of Architecture at King Saud University in Riyadh between 1981-1984, chairman of the board of Al-UMRAN (Saudi Society for Architects and Planners) since its inception in 1989 until 1993, and a member of the boards of directors of several governmental organizations, including Arriyadh Development Authority, the Makkah Development Authority, the Hail Development Authority, and the Royal Commission for Al-Jubail and Yanbu.
He was the Deputy Minister for Town Planning at the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs, Saudi Arabia, between 1984-2004, with the responsibilities of directing and supervising the entire spatial planning process at the national, regional, and local levels.
Dr. Al-Hathloul was a jury member for the Organization of Arab Cities' Award, a member of the 1998 Award Master Jury of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and a visiting professor at the Ecole National d'Urbanisme, University du 7 November, Carthage, Tunis, between 1998-2002. He is the author of several books and more than 50 articles in the field of planning and architecture, including The Arab Muslim City: Tradition, Continuity and Change in the Physical Environment (Dar Al Sahan, 1996).
He currently is Chairman of the Board and CEO of the Riyadh-based S. Alhathloul Development Co., which manages development and investment in real estate. He also is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Architecture and Planning at King Saud University in Riyadh and an Advisor to Arriyadh Development Authority.
Khalid Nahhas
Khalid Nahhas is a senior architect and founding associate director of Symbiosis Designs. He received a bachelor's degree in Geographic and Economic Planning from the University of Victoria in 1985, and a second bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of British Columbia in 1989, producing in the final year a thesis entitled Phenomenology and The Use of Polarities in Architecture. He has been practicing architecture since 1989, beginning his professional career in Vancouver, at Spaceworks Architects. In 1991, he co-founded Symbiosis Designs. He moved his practice to Amman in 1997 and has been practicing there since then.
His work includes several educational, health and hospitality, commercial, and residential buildings, as well as interior design projects. He was a member of the Design Committee of the Jordanian Pavilion in the Expo 2005, Aichi, Japan. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Children Museum, and the Chairman of its Board of Directors. Also He is on the Board of Directors of the Red Sea Institute of Cinematic Arts and the Jordan River Foundation. He was appointed member of the Amman Commission at the Greater Amman Municipality and served for three years advising on the new urban master plan. In addition, Nahhas, under his philosophy of "Total Architecture," founded two successful businesses, constructing the vision, branding, architecture, and operations for the Blue Fig restaurant and the Vy fitness club and restaurant. In 2002, he received the first Dubai-based Cityscape Young Architect Award.
Jury members of the Award’s 2008 first cycle
Sahel Al Hiyari
Sahel Al Hiyari is the principal architect in the firm Sahel Al Hiyari and Partners in Amman. He holds bachelor's degrees in both architecture and the fine arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a master's of architecture in urban design from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He also undertook post-graduate study at the School of Architecture at the University of Venice, where he taught from 1993 - 1995.
In 2002, Mr. Al Hiyari was chosen as the first architect to participate in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, and he subsequently was chosen as a protégé of Álvaro Siza in Portugal. His architectural work has been published in a number of local and international architectural publications, and has been exhibited in Jordan, Lebanon, Italy, and the United States. He has lectured at the Jordan University of Science and Technology in Irbid and Columbia University in New York. Mr. Al Hiyari's current architectural projects include an awareness centre in Wadi Musa for water reuse and landscaping in arid climates, the urban development of Ayla Oasis in Aqaba, housing towers in Kuwait, and private residences in Yemen and Jordan. He served as an On-Site Project Reviewer for the 2002 - 2004 cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and also served on the Award's 2007 Master Jury. Mr. Al Hiyari is also a painter, and exhibitions of his work have been mounted in Jordan, Lebanon, and Italy.
Han Tümertekin
Han Tümertekin is a practicing architect based in Istanbul and principal of the firm Mimarlar Tasarim Danismanlik, which he established in 1986. Previously, he worked in Paris at the architectural studios of Ahmet Gulgonen and of Bernstein, Chempetier, Vidal. His built works include residential, commercial, and institutional projects primarily in Turkey, as well as in the Netherlands, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France.
Mr. Tümertekin was trained in architecture at Istanbul Technical University and completed graduate studies in historic preservation at the University of Istanbul. He has taught architecture since 1992, and is presently a design critic at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He lectures at universities and cultural institutions throughout the world, most recently at the Technical University of Delft; at the 6th mAAN International Conference in Tokyo on "Our Modern - Re-appropriating Asia's Urban Heritage"; in Zagreb, at the International Symposium on Architecture "Dani Orisa"; and at Harvard. Mr. Tümertekin's works have been widely published in international architectural journals, including Domus, Abitare, and AV, and in the World Atlas of Contemporary Architecture.
His projects were exhibited in the 2006 Venice Biennale. He was awarded Turkey's National Architecture Award in 1998 and 2000, and received the Tepe Centre Architectural Award in 2000. A monograph of his recent work was published by Harvard University Press in 2006. Mr. Tümertekin won a 2004 Aga Khan Award for Architecture for B2 House, a private residence he designed for two brothers in Canakkale, Turkey. He also served on the Award's 2007 Master Jury.
Farouk Yaghmour
Farouk Yaghmour is an architect and planner, and is the principal of Yaghmour Architecture Office (Amman, Bethlehem, Sharjah, and Dubai). He studied architecture at the Hoch Schule fur Architektur und Bauwesen in Weimar, and did his graduate work at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he holds a master's degree in architecture and a Ph.D. in planning. He taught at the University of Jordan, Amman, and the State University of New York, and was the founding chairman of the Department of Architecture and Interior Design at Petra University, Amman.
Dr. Yaghmour has practiced architecture in Jordan, Palestine, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. He has been in charge of the urban and architectural development for a number of important historical sites including the Solomon Pools in Bethlehem, the Palestinian village of Beit Sahur, and the Baptism Site along the Jordan River in Jordan. He also was involved in efforts aimed at preserving the historical Palestinian city of Hebron. Dr. Yaghmour is the author of several publications addressing the subjects of architecture and environmental and urban planning. He also has served on a number of public advisory committees in Jordan that have been involved in advising and following up on large-scale development projects in the country.