Speaker

Keynote

Bernard Khoury

Architect, Beirut

Bernard Khoury studied architecture at the Rhode Island school of Design (BFA 1990 / B.Arch 1991). He received a Masters in Architectural Studies from Harvard University (M.Arch 1993). In 2001, he was awarded by the municipality of Rome the honourable mention of the Borromini Prize given to architects under forty years of age. In 2004, he was awarded the Architecture + Award. He is the co-founder of the Arab Center for Architecture. He was a visiting professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, L’Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris and the American University of Beirut. He has lectured and exhibited his work in prestigious academic institutions in Europe and the US including a solo show of his work given by the International Forum for Contemporary Architecture at the Aedes gallery in Berlin (2003) and numerous group shows including YOUprison at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin (2008) and Spazio at the opening show of the MAXXI museum in Rome (2010). He was the co-curator and architect of the Kingdom of Bahrain’s national pavilion at the Venice Biennale’s 14th International Architecture Exhibition in 2014. His work has been extensively published by the professional press. Khoury started an independent practice in 1993. Over the past fifteen years, his office has developed an international reputation and a significant diverse portfolio of projects both locally and abroad.

Nora Akawi

Columbia University, New York & Studio-X Amman

Nora Akawi is an architect based between Amman and New York. In 2012, she joined Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) as curator of Studio-X Amman, a regional platform for programming and research in architecture run by Columbia GSAPP and the Columbia Global Centers | Amman. At Studio-X Amman, she leads the conceptualization and implementation of public programmes and research initiatives on architecture in the Arab Mashreq by curating conferences, workshops, publications, screenings, lectures and other collective forms of production in partnership with researchers or institutions in the region. Since 2014, she has been teaching a graduate seminar course focused on borderlands, migration, citizenship and human rights at GSAPP.
She studied architecture at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (B.Arch 2009). In 2011, she received her MS in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture from Columbia GSAPP (MS.CCCP 2011), where she received the CCCP Thesis Award. Her thesis investigates the role of the archive in the formation of alternative political and spatial imaginaries in Palestine.
She participates as Visiting Lecturer at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Art, in the Critical Habitats post-graduate programme, and has served as a critic in architecture programmes at Columbia GSAPP, Barnard College, PennDesign, Harvard GSD, Georgia Tech, the Applied Science University in Amman and GJU’s SABE, among others. Publications include the book Architecture and Representation: The Arab City (co-edited by Amale Andraos, Nora Akawi and Caitlin Blanchfield, Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2016) and “Jerusalem: Dismantling Phantasmagorias, Constructing Imaginaries” in The Funambulist: Militarized Cities (edited by Leopold Lambert, 2015).