Award-winning Palestinian architect Dr Rasem Badran

The Academy of Urbanism and Urban Design Group are pleased to bring this special talk to London, kindly hosted at the offices of JTP.

Drawing upon an extensive portfolio of hundreds of built projects across the Middle East, Dr Rasems talk will focus on the importance of an architecture that combines a place-specific environmental response with meeting the key social and cultural requirements of a buildings users. His approach concentrates on designing positive, distinctive buildings and places that stand in marked contrast to self-conscious, anywhere-architecture that is devoid of reference to people, place, or culture.

Humanising living space and designing ethical buildings are a core part of Badrans work, within which he considers a projects context and ensures its connection to its surroundings. His projects seek to honour principles that benefit wider society, the environment and the people and such values can be seen in projects like the King Abdul Aziz Historic Center in Riyadh (1996-1999) and the Al-Bujeiri Development in Riyadh (2000-2015), among many others. In this talk Dr Rasem will explain how his built work offers a humane alternative to the deliberately commodified, branded and environmentally inarticulate architecture that has become the norm in so much of the developed world today.

Programme

17:15 Registration + Networking
18:00 Introduction  Charles Campion, JTP and Husam AlWaer, AoU+UDG
18:20 Towards a Humanising Urbanism  Dr Rasem Badran
19:20 Q&A
19:45 Drinks Reception
20:30 Close