The Tamayouz Excellence Award revealed the winners of its Women in Architecture and Construction Award 2019, a prize that honors the achievements of female architects in the Near East and North Africa, under 2 categories: Rising Star and Woman of Outstanding Achievement.
The Women in Architecture and Construction Award is part of the Tamayouz Excellence Award’s seven-award program that champions the best of architecture in the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. After shortlisting 9 women, the Rising star prize was awarded to Saudi architect Dana AlAmri, co-founder of the Jeddah-based practice Watad Studio, and the Woman of Outstanding Achievement honor was presented to Dr. Zeynep Celik, an academic known for her research and documentation on Ottoman-era and French colonial architecture and development across the region. Furthermore, the jury chose to highly commend Shahira Fahmy for Woman of Outstanding Achievement, an Egyptian architect and academic.
Read on to discover more about the achievers, from the official Tamayouz Excellence Award’s page.
Rising Star, Winner – Dana AlAmri
Architect and Co-Founder, Watad Studio
Dana Al-Amri is a Saudi architect and the co-founder of Jeddah-based Watad Studio, which looks at creating contextual designs and architectural solutions that respond to local needs. Representing an emerging generation of female architects from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Al-Amri hopes to support the needs of local communities and the developing urban fabric of her home city and country. She has designed a number of projects spanning the residential, commercial and hospitality sectors.
AlAmri has also worked on socially responsible projects, such as the Solar Ovens Project, which aimed to educate those devastated by the Jeddah floods on the use of solar power; research on the regeneration of Jeddah’s slums and neglected historical neighbourhoods; and Malik Road Redevelopment, which sought alternative solutions to the layout of the area’s streets in the hopes of reducing traffic and vehicle accidents. Al-Amri has also participated in conferences and fairs, such as Qamra, during which she discussed the importance of sustainable architecture and construction methods.
Woman of Outstanding Achievement, Winner – Dr. Zeynep Celik
Author; Professor, New Jersey Institute of Technology – Rutgers University; and Adjunct Professor, Columbia University
Dr. Zeynep Celik is a distinguished professor of architecture and history at New Jersey Institute of Technology – Rutgers University, and adjunct professor of history at Columbia University. She has also written, edited and produced numerous publications that explore the architecture and cities of the late Ottoman Empire and French colonialism. In the past, she taught at various universities including University of California, Berkley; Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris; Ecole Nationale d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme in Tunis, Barnard College and Bosporus University in Istanbul.
Some of Dr. Celik’s books include, The Remaking of Istanbul (1986), Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs (1997); Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830-1914 (2008); and About Antiquities: Politics of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire (2016). She is currently completing a new book titled Cities of the Middle East between the late Ottoman Empire and the British and French Mandates (working title). In addition to her publications and professorship, she has curated various exhibitions around the world, including ‘Walls of Algiers’ at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and ‘Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in Ottoman Empire’ at SALT, Istanbul. She is currently collaborating with an international team on an exhibition and conference titled, ‘Palestine from the Sky’, to open in Ramallah in 2020.
Woman of Outstanding Achievement, Highly Commended – Shahira Fahmy
Shahira Fahmy is an architect, urbanist, and creative researcher. She is the founder and principal of Shahira Fahmy Architects, which was established in Cairo in 2005. Fahmy has designed and built projects in the Middle East and Europe, and was once hailed by Phaidon as one of the “architects building the Arab future”. Her projects include the masterplan of Andermatt Swiss Alps’ Ski Resort, phase II and III; the architecture of the Allegria Resort, a housing and residential project in Cairo; and the restoration of an experimental arts hall in New York.
In addition to her built work, she has researched rapid urbanization and mapping and is a two-time recipient of Harvard University’s post-doc fellowship for her prescient work exploring the relationship between urbanism, governance, and cyberspace. She has taught at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation; the American University in Cairo; and Cairo University. She is currently working on an affordable housing project in the UK.
