By Ibrahim FawakherjiThere is a specific phenomenon that occurs somewhere between the first deep sigh of relief and the second attempt to hit the snooze button in a hotel room. It is the realization that the bed we are currently…
By Ibrahim FawakherjiIn 1969, the United States inhabited a state of profound schizophrenia. It was the year humanity, propelled by American engineering, first set foot on the lunar surface. Yet, while the world watched the flickering gray images of the…
As the calendar turns toward 2026, the global real estate market is entering a silent but decisive phase. A massive tranche of commercial lease agreements—signed in the stabilization period of the early 2020s—is reaching maturity. For the average observer, this…
There is a specific moment in every major development meeting that rarely makes it into the glossy pages of Projects. It happens when the client, usually representing a sovereign wealth fund or a corporate board, looks at two proposals. On…
When the cross comes down, a building does not simply become a shell. It becomes a question mark on the future of our cities.The final service ends. The heavy oak doors are locked, not for the night, but perhaps forever….
America did not change in sudden, tectonic shifts. It evolved quietly, almost imperceptibly, through the introduction of ordinary objects that slowly redefined the rituals of how people lived, moved, ate, and gathered. To the observant critic, Architecture was rarely the…
How the Coriolis Effect Quietly Shapes the Built WorldArchitecture is rarely discussed through the lens of planetary physics. We are accustomed to viewing our cities as the products of human decisions, ink lines, and zoning masterplans. Yet, the deeper truth…
Why Some Cities Become Emotional Destinations While Others Remain SilentThere is a sentence people repeat without thinking about its implications: “Paris is poetic.”Rome is romantic. Vienna is musical. New York is cinematic. These descriptions are not architectural analyses. They are…
If the world is changing, it would be intellectually dishonest to assume that housing will remain untouched. Throughout history, architecture has never led social transformation; it has always followed it. When theorists, technologists, and public figures speak today about a…
If architecture were a versioned software, 2025 would not be a clean release. It would be something closer to a transitional build, unstable in places, surprisingly powerful in others, and clearly signaling that the system beneath it had changed. Calling…
Fifteen years ago, during one of my early years in practice, I was sitting in a meeting room with a real estate developer who had just joined the discussion. The atmosphere was calm, almost routine, until he leaned forward and…
Architectural competitions today are often reduced to announcements, deadlines, and prize amounts. Platforms publish updates, submissions circulate online, and winners are celebrated briefly before attention shifts elsewhere. Even platforms like ArchUp participate in this cycle by documenting competitions, results, and…
In Arab and Islamic cultures, the final act of honoring a human being is not symbolic. It is physical, intimate, and reserved for the few. When a funeral ends and the crowd disperses, there are always two figures who remain…
“Six months into 2026 will mark two decades since my graduation, a span long enough to watch architectural labor reinvent itself more than once. From this distance, the new generation does not appear fragile or distracted, as clichés suggest, but…
Discussions about the “oldest architecture” in the Middle East often collapse into cultural pride or symbolic narratives, yet the question itself is fundamentally architectural and archaeological. When stripped of sentiment, the record becomes clearer, more complex, and far more instructive…
For the past weeks, much of the global discussion surrounding THE LINE has fixated on a single word: the trench. Images of a long excavation have circulated widely, often framed as evidence of uncertainty, pause, or excess. Yet history suggests…
For decades, media empires were built the same way cities once were: around scarcity. Scarcity of distribution, scarcity of production, scarcity of imagination. Warner Bros did not merely produce films; it organized collective memory. It shaped how people saw heroes,…
There are memories we do not choose. They choose us. They attach themselves quietly, returning years later with the precision of photographs and the weight of stories we did not know were forming. I was six years old—too young to…
In much of the Middle East and other arid regions, architecture grows under skies that rarely darken. Buildings rise confidently in climates where rain feels like a rumor, not a threat, and where dryness practically writes part of the building…
It was a quiet conversation, the kind that should not have carried any significance beyond a routine design review, but it did. A modest residential building, intended for households of limited income, was being discussed in detail: setbacks, core layout,…
There is a dangerous misunderstanding in contemporary architectural discourse: that discussing social classes in planning is inherently discriminatory, or that acknowledging economic stratification somehow undermines the moral neutrality of the built environment. Yet the opposite is true. Cities do not…
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