This interview features Hadeel Ayed Mohammad an Architect and Fulbright Scholar from Jordan. She currently holds an associate architect position at Praxis Architects and Urban Designers in Amman.
She has previously worked at SHoP Architects (New York City, NY), Ewing Cole (Philadelphia, PA), and Sahel Al-Hiyari Architects (Amman, Jordan).
She has also collaborated with several international architecture firms throughout her career including Snøhetta, Zaha Hadid Architects and Tatiana Bilbao Estudio.
In this interview, Hadeel discusses her professional background and her return to Amman to work on public space, exploring her approach to inclusive urban design through projects such as the 7th Stair Project and “Aqaba: A Resilient City through its Neighbourhoods.” She reflects on the experiences that have shaped her approach to creating more accessible and resilient public spaces.
Tell us about your background, and what brought you from experiences working in New York back to Amman to work on public space.
I completed my Master’s in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 2016 and started working at SHoP architects in New York shortly after.
My early work experiences mostly included private residential developments and educational institutions.
My interest always lied in design as a creative response to larger social and environmental contexts.
I hoped that sharpening my design skills and architectural craft working on private developments could one day serve a larger audience beyond a private client, providing that same level of design proficiency to the public realm.
In 2018, I returned to Amman and joined Praxis Architects and Urban Designers, where I currently hold an associate architect position.
During my time at Praxis, I conducted research on the incorporation of nature-based solutions within urban public spaces throughout a one-year long project with GIZ.
The project included designing and implementing 3 pilot public space projects in disadvantaged areas in Amman. The participatory nature of the project allowed me to interact directly with local communities to better understand their needs.
This experience fueled my desire to craft more meaningful urban spaces and to raise awareness to the vitality of incorporating functional green infrastructure within the public realm.
I became all the more conscious of our influence as architects on the natural world, and its reflected environmental and social effects on communities.
Tell us a bit about the visions, goals or principles behind your redesign of the 7th Stair Project? How does that project reflect your wider approach to public space?
The rehabilitation of the 7th Stair was a part of a larger visionary project proposed by GIZ for improving living conditions in disadvantaged areas in Amman via the implementation of Green Infrastructure.
The key principles throughout the design were engaging community participation, introducing green infrastructure, and improving safety and accessibility.
My approach towards public space has always aimed to give new meaning to neglected urban spaces and to rethink ordinary urban typologies to maximize their capacity for social interaction and to environmental performance.
The Stair as an open space typology sits at the intersection of public and private domain, redefining spatial and social boundaries.
It expanded my mindset towards designing public space, where physical interventions along private doorway thresholds forced a parallel shift in the design process, crossing a social threshold to deeply engage with the complex dynamics of the staircase community.
Tell us about the step-by-step guide that came out of that project, and how it’s now used to train municipalities across Amman.
The 7th stair was one of three pilot sites that were implemented, representing three urban typologies in Amman.
The philosophy behind the project was to adopt an incremental approach in greening the city, gradually introducing nodes and links to build a green infrastructure network.
The idea was to document a step-by-step methodology based on the implementation of the three pilot sites, documenting tools and lessons learned for engaging the community in green infrastructure projects.
This would allow the process to be replicated onto new public open space sites, introducing new green urban nodes into the city, and embedding the methodology within local municipal practice.
The resulting publication was realized as a handbook released in both English and Arabic and distributed among employees of Amman municipality.
In addition, several training sessions for municipality employees were held to train them on how to use this handbook.
What are some of the challenges you’ve faced working in a neighbourhood shaped by informal settlement and land ownership issues, and how have you worked through them?
The site had a lot of difficult issues to tackle including accessibility, hygiene, safety, and ownership disputes.
One of the main challenges was distinguishing the cause and effect; understanding which issues were a symptom of a larger root problem and coming to terms with whether a design intervention within the project scope will be able to address the root cause or only decrease its effects.
The cause and effect tree was mapped and discussed with the community in one of the participatory workshops to explain and manage their expectations.
For instance, The issue of vehicular access couldn’t be resolved due to land ownership problems surrounding the adjacent road that required Municipal intervention.
The role of us as consultants stayed within our scope, hoping that the success of the project would be a catalyst to inspire future change. It can’t always be all or nothing.
Tell us about “Aqaba: A Resilient City through its Neighbourhoods,” and how that project extended your approach beyond Amman.
Aqaba’s organized urban grid allows for public realm interventions to be more systematic in comparison to Amman, where interventions remain more nuanced.
The study analyzed the city at the neighbourhood scale around 4 main pillars: environment, planning, mobility, and community engagement. It aimed to provide a clear framework for transformational change looking at the neighborhood as a building block for the city’s resilience.
Two neighborhoods were selected, analyzed and re-interpreted with targeted interventions that improve walkability, micro mobility, micro climate, bio-diversity, and community inclusion.
The strategies based on the 4 key study pillars could be adapted to the neighborhoods’ context and replicated in other neighborhoods in the future.
I led and attended several workshops with Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority and members of the neighborhood’s community.
The study was another example of leading change through proposing applicable replicable strategies that re-think typical neighborhood structures and networks.
What are you working on now?
My team and I recently won first place in a competition to re-design Princess Haya Circle in Aqaba, a 9,000 sqm roundabout Aqaba’s main arterial road.
The design rethinks the role of the roundabout within the public realm, from being reduced to housing decorative monuments and being a tool to merely regulate vehicular traffic, to a space that engages safe pedestrian connectivity.
By being a key node in the green infrastructure network, it can house meaningful community gatherings, fostering cool microclimates and bio-diversity within the city.
I’ve been working on architecture and public realm designs for several industrial cities emerging in Riyadh (KSA) and Ma’an (Jordan). Looking at desert industrial landscapes through a new lens.
One of the most notable projects that recently broke ground is Modon Lake Park at Sudair industrial city, which utilizes treated industrial waste water as an opportunity for ecological, social and recreational benefits.
I’m also currently exhibiting a piece titled “Transference” at this year’s version of Amman Design Week.
In addition, I’m participating in several talks and panel discussions, highlighting my work with Praxis on the 3 pilot sites in disadvantaged areas of Amman through an exhibition piece, and a short documentary film reflecting on the experience 5 years after the project’s completion.
The 7th Stair sits in a neighbourhood most planners wouldn’t touch because of its legal and social complexity. What was the real obstacle you had to get through there, and how did you get past it?
One of the key thinking shifts I faced in this project was to abandon the “big idea” approach, where the design solution is expressed through a singular statement.
The design had to be more nuanced and responsive to patiently adapt to the delicate variations in existing threshold levels and varying conditions along the length of the 100 meter staircase.
Managing the requirements and expectations of various actors including the community, municipality, donor, was another key challenge.
I did not only have to design the project itself, but to design the process of engagement to guide these actors’ participation and allow their input to be meaningful. This required researching and creating tools and activities that went hand in hand with the design process.
Many planners and architects avoid such sites because they often do not follow the standard practice, and require a more tailored process, as opposed to a big flashy idea.
The limitations of funding that usually come with these types of projects are also a challenge. As a result many of these projects fall into the trap of shallow beautification that disguises the problems.
But it is crucial for designers to face these challenges so that these less privileged areas are not neglected.
Every change starts with small steps and engaging the community allows residents to feel that their voices are heard, that they have a say in the way the public spaces around their homes are shaped.
What’s a piece of advice you’d give a young architect choosing the next step of her career?
I would advise them to always be curious, to question, to explore, and to discover. Every good idea begins with a good question.
Young architects need to work meticulously on developing their architectural thinking through constant exposure to best practices.
I would advise against restricting oneself to a specific theory, style, or standard practice very early on and to experiment as much as possible.
Architecture is inherently multi-disciplinary and that’s where curiosity comes in. Exploring the intersections with landscape, urbanism, social impact, environment and sustainability is crucial.
Participating in competitions benefited me a lot in my early career. Even with a full time-job, I always collaborated with peers to develop competition entries for sites we were curious about.
Regardless of the competition results, the process allowed me to see numerous entries representing different possible solutions for the same design question.
I was approaching competitions, not just as a portfolio addition, but to rigorously study the many scenarios a design can follow, how they are subsequently developed, and what makes one idea stand out among the others.
This curiosity to see how different minds approach the same problem has significantly broadened my way of thinking as a young architect.
In the age of fast results and the pursuit of instant gratification, be patient with yourself. Try not to be discouraged by unsatisfactory experiments or criticism and embrace the feedback.
Acquiring architectural experience and skill is an accumulative process.
You learn something new whenever you experiment with something new. And in the age of growing digital ‘influence’, understand the dynamics of architecture’s slower tangible real world influence.
Pursue work that speaks to you, inspires you and leaves an impact. Always take ownership regardless of the size of the task at hand.
Meet the Shortlist series is a compilation of interviews with those who have been shortlisted for our awards. Saliha Benmessaoud is on the shortlist for the Women in Architecture and Construction Award, which recognises women who have made outstanding contributions to architecture and the built environment across the Near East and North Africa.
Meet the Shortlist: Dr Hiba Alkhalaf, Jomana Baddad, Meisa Batayneh, Nuha Dandis, Ronak Roshan Gilvaei, Saliha Benmessaoud, Salima Naji, Salwa and Selma Mikoü, and Dr Zahra Hussain.
Tamayouz Excellence Award is sponsored by 99 Properties Development, Coventry University, Dewan Architects + Engineers, the Mohamed Makiya Foundation, Bonair Ltd, Aji Group, and Round City Magazine.