 | This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia.(February 2010) |
The Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) is located at the American University of Beirut (AUB). [1] This independent institute develops policy research in the Arab region. [1] It is currently headed by Joseph Bahout. [2] The Institute won a prestigious architecture award in 2016. [3]
The Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) was founded through donations by Lebanese businessman and politician Issam Fares, who also served as Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon.
IFI activities include conferences, workshops and symposia; visiting fellows (from a few days to a full year); guest lecturers, and thematic lecture series.
The American University of Beirut (AUB) master plan requested a home for its new think tank that had minimal impact on the surrounding area and preserved sight lines to the Mediterranean below, despite its location on the upper part of campus. Architecture firm Zaha Hadid won the design competition to create this building; she was a former AUB student. [4]
The Issam Fares Institute building is 3,000 square feet and made of fair-faced concrete. The designers placed a reading room, workshop conference room, and research spaces in a 21-metre-long cantilever. [5] The campus has intersecting routes of interlocking platforms with research and discussion spaces. Second-floor research rooms connect with the rest of the campus via a ramp surrounded by hundred-year-old ficus and cypress trees. [5] The building's height matches the surrounding trees. [6] The institute has an oval courtyard on the upper campus.
In 2016, architect Zaha Hadid died, and the building won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in the same year. [7]
The American University of Beirut is a private, non-sectarian, and independent university chartered in New York with its campus in Beirut, Lebanon. AUB is governed by a private, autonomous board of trustees and offers programs leading to bachelor's, master's, MD, and PhD degrees.
Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid was an Iraqi-British architect, artist and designer, recognised as a major figure in architecture of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Hadid studied mathematics as an undergraduate and then enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1972. In search of an alternative system to traditional architectural drawing, and influenced by Suprematism and the Russian avant-garde, Hadid adopted painting as a design tool and abstraction as an investigative principle to "reinvestigate the aborted and untested experiments of Modernism [...] to unveil new fields of building".
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) is an architectural prize established by Aga Khan IV in 1977. It aims to identify and reward architectural concepts that successfully address the needs and aspirations of Muslim societies in the fields of contemporary design, social housing, community development and improvement, restoration, reuse and area conservation, as well as landscape design and improvement of the environment.
Issam Fares is a Lebanese businessman, former member of the Parliament of Lebanon and Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon.
Aga Khan University is a not-for-profit institution and an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network. It was founded in 1983 as Pakistan's first private university. Starting in 2000, the university expanded to Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the United Kingdom and Afghanistan.
Fadi Makki is a pioneer in the application of behavioural economics to public policy in the Middle East, where he led a large number of RCTs in policy areas such as healthy life style, compliance and rule of law, sustainability, education and workers’ welfare.
Nabil Gholam is a French-Lebanese architect, urban planner and the founder of Nabil Gholam Architects (ngª). In 2010, Monocle magazine has called Gholam a "leading" architect in Lebanon. In Modern Architecture: A Critical History, critic Kenneth Frampton cited Gholam's colony of holiday chalets at Faqra as one of "two works [which] promise a renewal of Lebanese architecture".
Rami George Khouri is a Jordanian-American journalist and editor with Palestinian background. He was born in New York City to an Arab Palestinian Christian family. His father, George Khouri, a Nazarene journalist in what was the British mandate of Palestine, had traveled with his wife to New York in 1947 to cover the United Nations (UN) debates about the future of Palestine. His family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is also a public speaker. After attending secondary school at the International School of Geneva in Switzerland, Rami Khouri returned to the US to complete his education. Khouri has served for many years as the chief umpire for Little League Baseball in Jordan.
Beirut Souks is a major commercial district in Beirut Central District. With over 200 shops, 25 restaurants and cafes, an entertainment center, a 14 cinema complex, periodic street markets, and an upcoming department store, it is Beirut's largest and most diverse shopping and leisure area. Beirut Souks also features piazzas, and public space. Designed in five separate commissions by international and Lebanese architects, Beirut Souks offer 128,000 sq. m of built-up area interspersed with landscaped pedestrian zones.
Tarek Mitri is a Lebanese university professor, independent politician and former government minister.
Zaha Hadid Architects is British architecture and design firm founded by Zaha Hadid (1950–2016), with its main office situated in Clerkenwell, London. After the death of "starchitect" Hadid, Patrik Schumacher became head of the firm, at the time with a staff of 400 with 36 projects across 21 countries.
Hanif Mohamed Kara is a structural engineer and is design director and co-founder of London-based structural engineering practice AKT II. He has taught design internationally, is a member of the board of trustees for the Architecture Foundation and was a commissioner for CABE from 2008 to 2011. He is currently Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology at Harvard Graduate School of Design. He also taught as professor of Architectural Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm from 2009 until 2012. He lives in London with his wife and two daughters.
The King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC) is an advisory think tank specializing in energy economics, climate, and sustainability that seeks to advance Saudi Arabia’s energy sector and inform global policies through evidence-based advice and applied research. It is located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Sari Hanafi is currently a professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut and chair of the Islamic Studies program. He is the president of the International Sociological Association and also the editor of Idafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology (Arabic). In 2018, Hanafi founded "Athar", the Portal for Social impact of scientific research in/on the Arab world.
Marina Tabassum is a Bangladeshi architect. She is the principal architect of Marina Tabassum Architects.
Lamia Moubayed Bissat is an Lebanese public servant.
Fuad Ishaq Khuri was a Lebanese anthropologist and writer. He was professor of anthropology at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon from 1964 to 1987. Due to the worsening Lebanese civil war at the time, Khuri left the country for the United Kingdom and held a series of visiting professorships at the London School of Economics, University of Manchester, University of Chicago and the University of Oregon.
Tamayouz Excellence Award is an international award for architecture established in 2012. It has eight prizes: six awards recognise individuals, student projects and institutions; two awards are thematic design competitions and a design challenge. Tamayouz Excellence Award runs an annual cycle of all awards. In addition to its prizes, Tamayouz organises public talks, conferences, design challenges and design workshops, and publishes an annual book that documents each cycle and the architectural ideas that are produced as a result.
Albert Kostanian is a Lebanese politician and journalist of Armenian descent.
Lina Ghotmeh is a Lebanese-born architect and founding principal of Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture based in Paris, France. Born and raised in Beirut, she introduces a distinctive architectural posture informed by concepts of rebirth and renewal with natural materials and traditional building techniques. Her work is celebrated for its sensitivity to history and materiality, linking communities past and present, ultimately seeking to create a sustainable, inclusive architecture.
