Nezar AlSayyad

Dr. Nezar AlSayyad Ph.D.
Born	(1956-10-10)October 10, 1956
Nationality	Egyptian

Nezar Al Sayyad (born October 10, 1956) is an Architect, City Planner, Urban Designer, and Urban Historian, now a retired professor at the University of California Berkeley in the College of Environmental Design, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award, the most prestige and highest honor the University of California bestows on its faculty for exceptional teaching. Educated as an architect, planner, and urban historian, AlSayyad is principally an urbanist whose specialty is the study of cities, their urban forms and spaces, and their impact on their social and cultural realities. As a scholar, AlSayyad has authored and edited several books on colonialism, identity, Islamic architecture, tourism, tradition, urbanism, urban design, urban history, urban informality, and virtuality.

In 1988, AlSayyad co-founded the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE), a scholarly association concerned with the study of indigenous vernacular and popular built environments around the world. In the same year he founded the area of Environmental Design and Urbanism in Developing Countries (EDUDC), an interdisciplinary area of research that connects history, theory, social processes, and design at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley. As an academic advisor, AlSayyad commitment is evident in his mentorship that led to graduation on more than 50 Ph.D students in both Architecture and Planning in addition to supervising more than a hundred M.Arch, MCP and MUD theses during his 33 year career at Berkeley.

AlSayyad has also produced and co-directed two public television video documentaries: “Virtual Cairo” and “At Home with Mother Earth.” Among his numerous grants are those received from the U.S. Department of Education, NEA—Design Arts Program, Getty Grant Program, the Graham Foundation, the SSRC, and a Guggenheim fellowship. His awards include the Beit Al-Quran Medal from Bahrain, the Pioneer American Society Book Award, and the American Institute of Architects Education Honors. AlSayyad maintains a small architecture and urban design practice XXA- The Office of Xross-Xultural Architecture which provides design and consulting work to various clients in the US and several Developing Countries.AlSayyad is invited as a visiting Professor and as a lecturer in more than 40 countries, and is recognized around the World as both a scholar and a public intellectual.

AlSayyad is currently the President of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE), and Faculty Director of the Center for Arab Societies and Environments Studies (CASES). He is a member of the Urban Design Graduate Group (MUD) and the Global Studies Graduate Group. For almost two decades AlSayyad also chaired the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Berkeley leading it to International standing.

Specializations

• History of Architecture and Urbanism
• Cinematic Urbanism and Virtual Reality
• Colonialism and Hybrid Urbanism
• Cultural Heritage and policy
• Environmental Design and urbanism in Developing Countries
• Housing and International Development
• Islamic Architecture and Middle Eastern Cities
• Religious fundamentalisms and the city
• Traditional Dwelling and Settlements
• Urban Design
• Urban History
• Urban Informality

Academic Biography and Education

Nezar AlSayyad was born in Cairo, Egypt to a family of educators. His father was a well-known geographer, poet and a major intellectual in Egypt. AlSayyad was born with a mind of a philosopher, he was attracted to historical facts that he was absorbing from books that he could find in the house. His other interest was in building, building something with his hands, creating designs in his mind and analyzing architectural and city forms. After spending a year in Norman, Oklahoma as a child, AlSayyad at a young age decided to return and make his life in America. Following his graduation from the same High School from which Edward Said had graduated, AlSayyad joined Cairo University where he excelled as both an undergraduate and graduate student obtaining his Bachelor of Architectural Engineering in 1977 and his Higher Diploma - Town Planning in 1979. In 1981, AlSayyad finished his M.S. in Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He then went on to work for Yamasaki & Associates, architects of the World Trade Center, before accepting his first professorial position at the University of Petroleum and Minerals (UPM) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. After publishing his first book, AlSayyad was invited by the then well-known architectural historian Spiro Kostof to join Berkeley to pursue a Ph.D. in Architectural and urban history, where AlSayyad also landed at a lecturer position in the Department of City and Regional Planning in the same college. By the time of his Ph.D. completion in 1988, AlSayyad had established the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE) where he served and still serves as the President and the Chief Editor of the Association's highly acclaimed peer-reviewed journal "Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review."

Books

• Whose Tradition?. Co-edited with Mark Gillem and David Moffat. Routledge: London, 2017.
• Traditions: The Real, the Hyper, and the Virtual in the Built Environment. Routledge: London, 2014.
• Cairo: Histories of a City. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 2011.
• The Fundamentalist City? Co-edited with Mejgan Massoumi. Routledge: London, 2010.
• Cinematic Urbanism: A History of the Modern From Reel to Real. Routledge: London & New York, 2006.
• Making Cairo Medieval. Co-edited with Irene Bierman and Nasser Rabbat. Lexington Books: Lanham & London, 2005.
• Müslüman Avrupa ya da Avro-Islam. Co-edited with Manuel Castells. Istanbul: Everest, 2004 (In Turkish).
• The End of Tradition? Editor. Routledge: London & New York, 2003.
• Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia. Co-edited with Ananya Roy. Lexington Books: Lanham and London, 2003.
• Europa Musulmana O Euro-Islam. Barcelona: Alianza Editorial/Ensayo, 2003 (In Spanish).
• Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam. Co-edited with Manuel Castells. Lexington Books: Lanham and London, 2002.
• Consuming Tradition/Manufacturing Heritage: Global Norms and Urban Forms in an Age of Tourism. Routledge: London, New York, 2001.
• Hybrid Urbanism: On the Identity Discourse and the Built Environment. Greenwood/Praeger: New York and Westport, 2001.
• Al Mudun fi Sadr al-Islam: The Early Cities of Islam. Beit Al-Quran: Bahrain, 1996 (in Arabic).
• Forms of Dominance: On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise. Editor. Avebury: London and Aldershot, 1992.
• Cities and Caliphs: On the Genesis of Arab Muslim Urbanism. Greenwood Press: New York, Westport, and London, 1991.
• Dwellings, Settlements and Tradition. Co-edited with Jean-Paul Bourdier. University Press of America: New York, Lanham, and London, 1989.
• The Design and Planning of Housing. Editor. UPM Press: Dhahran & Houston, 1984.
• Streets of Islamic Cairo; A Configuration of Urban Themes and Patterns. Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, AKP: Cambridge, 1981.

Books Pending Publication

• Nile: Urban Histories on the Banks of a River. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, publication scheduled for 2017.
• Architecture's Poverty. Routledge: London, publication scheduled for 2017.