The History of Architectural Education in the Middle East and North Africa

Farhan Karim
(Arizona State University)


This presentation discusses the recently published book ‘The History of Architectural Education in the Middle East and North Africa,’ which explores the varied socio-political landscapes within which architectural schools and programs emerged across the region during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Addressing a major gap in architectural history, the book traces how modernization, real estate development, and public demands for more inclusive urban environments shaped the evolution of architectural pedagogy and modern cities. Through a series of interconnected case studies, Farhan Karim and Mohammad Gharipour present a parallel history of architectural institutions across the Middle East and North Africa, arguing that architectural educators and institutions not only shaped the technical discourse of building, but also sparked broader debates about urban society, modernity, and the future of the built environment.

Studio, Site, Society: Global South Perspectives

Amrita Madan
(School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi)







Architectural education has long been shaped by models rooted in Euro-American contexts, often exporting studio cultures and professional norms that do not fully align with the realities of the Global South. Building on Madan and Mathur’s (2025) review of the evolving relationship between practice and education, this talk re-reads four decades of discourse through a Global South lens -- foregrounding informality, resource constraints, rapid urbanisation, and deep social inequalities as central, not peripheral, conditions of learning and practice. Across contexts in South Asia, Latin America, and Africa, the “gap” between studio and site is not simply pedagogical -- it is structural. Practice frequently unfolds in informal settlements, contested terrains, and under-resourced governance systems, while education often remains anchored in abstracted, idealised briefs. Yet, the same contexts have also generated rich, alternative pedagogies: live projects, community partnerships, incremental housing studios, and activist practices that blur the boundaries between architect, researcher, and citizen. This talk argues that these approaches should not be seen as adaptations to constraint, but as epistemic contributions that can reshape architectural education globally. What forms of knowledge emerge when design engages with scarcity, informality, and collective agency? How might curricula centre lived realities without instrumentalising them? And what does “practice-readiness” mean in contexts where the profession itself is fluid and evolving? Reframing the practice-education relationship as a situated, plural, and political construct, the session proposes a more grounded model of learning -- one that treats the studio as a site of negotiation between global frameworks and local realities. As a PATIO conversation, this talk invites participants to share experiences across geographies and to imagine how Global South perspectives can move from the margins to actively redefining architectural education worldwide -- toward more plural, grounded, and globally relevant futures.