When Gold Rises and Oil Falls: The New Economics of Architecture
The closing quarter of 2024 has been anything but quiet.Gold reached record highs, the sharpest climb in decades, while oil…
Author: Ibrahim Fawakherji
Fawakherji is the editorial pen name of a practicing architect and researcher whose architectural practice dates to 2006. He has written the Fawakherji column on ArchUp since 2019, exploring architecture, cities, design culture, society and technology. Visit the Fawakherji column for essays and the column’s editorial focus, the author archive for posts attributed to this byline, or the community member profile for BuddyPress profile information.
The Genie of Architecture
It began, as all enchantments do, with travel.At the end of September 2025, we received an invitation to cover Cersaie,…
The Price of Integrity: When Professions Lose Their Soul
It began, as many stories do, with something small.A routine dental visit. A week of waiting, rescheduling, and sitting for…
The Camel Never Walks Back: A Lesson in Architecture, Integrity, and Timing
Last week, I found myself sitting with a man whose words stayed with me long after the conversation ended.He was…
The AI Marketplace: When Architecture Meets Instant Checkout
For decades, architects, designers, and manufacturers have treated the web as a showroom. A place to display catalogs, publish project…
Subsurface Treasures: Re-evaluating Historic Buildings After the Gold Price Frenzy
In every gilded window, in every shimmering detail, lies a treasure we rarely calculate. It is not only a financial…
Advertising on the Worship – The Commercialization of Sacred Architecture
Walking through Piazza del Duomo in Milan, one cannot escape the gravitational pull of the cathedral. Milan Cathedral, begun in…
Florence: City of Stone, Light, and Legend
Wind moves differently in Florence. It carries with it the smell of marble dust and rain, a fragrance of history…
Google Maps Architecture: A Crime Against the Human Scale
There is a stretch of highway I drive almost every week. From the bridge, a particular hardscape always catches my…
What No Eye Has Seen: The Whispered Marvel of Trojena’s Ultra-Luxury Mansions
I remember once asking an architect, during a closed-door conference, about the most extraordinary project he had ever encountered but…
America, the Continent of Architecture
From New York to Las Vegas, why America became the world’s architectural stage Imagine walking into a neighborhood divided in…
On the Walls of Miami’s Streets
I begin in the middle of a Miami street. As you advance, step by step, a question takes hold: why…
Architectural Originality on Trial: Authenticity vs. Repetition in Global Icons
What is originality in architecture? And what is faithful evolution? Zaha Hadid in MiamiIn mid-August 2025, I found myself spending…
Architectural Prophecies
Architectural Prophecies — What Comes After the Race?Have you ever tasted mango gelato with chili? The kind they serve in…
Contradictions of Sustainability: When the Sidewalk Outlasts the Shelter
Imagine this: three billion people around the world, each sitting on a stationary bike—not to lose weight, but to generate…
New York from Behind the Glass: An Architectural Drive Through the Summer of 2025
Most architectural journeys in New York begin on foot. You walk the grid. You feel the city. You breathe the…
Miami: A City Engineered for Beauty, Framed by Design
Miami is not just a city; it is a laboratory of sun-drenched urban beauty, where design choices echo cultural identities…
Orlando, Revisited: A City of Fantasy, Frameworks, and Fragile Façades
Few American cities have curated a more deliberate mythology than Orlando. From the moment you set foot on its meticulously…
Does Beauty Live in Miami?
By ArchUp EditorI once read something strange before landing in Miami. A theoretical essay titled Archigenetics, published by a Saudi…
Elevator Room
The Architectural Flaw No One Dares to Fix There’s a silent intruder haunting the skylines of our new suburbs and…
The Architect of Choice and the Builder of Orders: A Tale of the Predestined and the Free
Some people walk into a room, and you instantly know—they’re the kind who wait for instructions. They sit where the…
