A Window into the Past:
A 1983 book by Jordanian contractor Muthaffar Abou Seoud about the projects and buildings he had built

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The Center for the Study of the Built Environment’s interests include documenting buildings of importance in Jordan from the twentieth century. In this context, we would like to present an important book published in 1983 that documents a number of buildings that were executed by the engineer and contractor Muthaffar Abou  Seoud (Mudhaffar abu al-Sa’ud) . These buildings include a number of college buildings in the University of Jordan campus that were constructed  between 1964 and 1966, the 1970s Housing Bank building in Amman’s ‘Abdali district, and Raghadan Bridge, which dates to the early 1950s.

We are publishing a number of pages from this book that include pictures and brief information about various buildings that Abou Seoud executed through his company, the Development Engineering and Contracting Company, which he founded in 1962.

Muthaffar Abou Seoud was born in 1924 in Jerusalem. He completed his bachelors and masters degrees in Turkey, and then moved to Iraq to work in the contracting field. He established in 1956 a new company in Iraq with an Iraqi colleague under the name of the “Engineering, Development and Contracting Company,” which existed up to 1962, when Abou Seoud returned to Jordan, and established the “Development Engineering and Contracting Company” in Amman. The Company was licensed to undertake general contracts for the construction of buildings and infrastructure projects, and its work extended over a relatively long period of time that spanned from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Project from 1950's

Projects from 1960's

Projects from 1970's

The book’s cover.

The book’s cover.

Project from 1950's

Raghadan Bridge

The book’s introduction by Muthaffar Abou Seoud.

The book’s introduction by Muthaffar Abou Seoud.

Projects from 1960's

Colleges' Buildings in the University of Jordan

The Jordan Central Bank

The Villa Rosa

Industrial Development Bank

The National Parliament - Phase 1

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Projects from 1970's

The Royal Scientific Society Cafeteria

Physicians Housing

The Housing Bank