Author: Mahshid Motamed

Architecture has traditionally been dominated by visual thinking. Design education, professional practice, and public perception often prioritize form, proportion, material appearance, and spatial composition as experiences perceived mainly through the eyes. Buildings are photographed, rendered, and evaluated visually long before they are physically experienced. As a result, architecture has frequently been treated as a visual object, while its soundscape, the acoustic environment that shapes how spaces are perceived, remains largely overlooked. Humanity, naturally, decided that looking at things was enough to understand them. An efficient misunderstanding that shaped entire cities. During recent decades, however, architects and theorists have increasingly questioned…

Architecture schools around the world have undergone a remarkable demographic transformation over the past few decades. Walk into the design studios of universities in Europe, North America, Australia, Asia, or the Middle East, and one observation becomes immediately apparent: women often make up half, and in many schools more than half, of the student population. In some countries, female enrollment in architecture programs exceeds 60 percent, suggesting that the profession has successfully attracted talented women and is moving toward gender equality. Yet this impression dissolves shortly after graduation. Visit major architectural firms, construction sites, executive boardrooms, or professional conferences, and…

Among the countless architectural elements that have shaped Iranian architecture over more than three millennia, none is as structurally significant or culturally expressive as the arch. More than a solution for spanning openings, the arch became a language through which Iranian builders articulated space, distributed loads, manipulated light, and expressed spiritual and aesthetic ideals. While columns symbolize vertical authority and walls define enclosure, arches create a transition. They connect spaces, frame views, distribute forces, and establish rhythm within buildings. Iranian architecture developed one of the richest vocabularies of arches in the world. Unlike many architectural traditions that relied heavily on…

Architecture has long occupied a paradoxical position among the professions. It is associated with prestige, creativity, cultural influence, and intellectual rigor, yet architects often earn considerably less than professionals with comparable levels of education and responsibility. Becoming an architect typically requires five to seven years of formal education, a lengthy internship, professional licensing, and continuous professional development. Despite these demands, architects in many countries struggle with relatively modest salaries, long working hours, and intense competition. This contradiction raises an important question: Why do architects, who shape cities and influence billions of dollars in construction investment, often earn incomes that fail…

Chinese architecture has long been associated with a recognizable visual language: bilateral symmetry, enclosed courtyards, layered roofs, horizontal spatial composition, and cosmological ordering shaped by feng shui principles. For centuries, temples, palaces, and pagodas have become simplified global symbols representing not only China but East Asian architecture as a whole. Yet contemporary Chinese architecture no longer operates comfortably within these inherited images. Over the past few decades, China has radically transformed both the physical form and intellectual meaning of its built environment. The 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai Expo marked decisive turning points in this transformation. These global…

“The space values of the building preserved, enlarged, expanded, presented makes an entirely new architecture.” – Frank Lloyd Wright, 1957 As architecture students around the world, we are immersed in history courses that trace the stories, ideologies, and conditions behind the built environment we inhabit today. Among the figures we study, few command as much admiration as Frank Lloyd Wright: a pioneer whose vision of organic architecture still captivates the imagination. His philosophy, rooted in the harmony between building and landscape, stands apart from today’s contemporary definitions of green architecture or purely technical sustainability frameworks. Wright sought an almost spiritual…

Abu Dhabi’s relentless push to reposition itself as the Middle East’s cultural capital warrants scrutiny, not applause. The Saadiyat Island constellation, including the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi, the Zayed National Museum, and the perpetually delayed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, now promises yet another colossal addition, “Dar Al Funoon.” One must ask: does the UAE genuinely aspire to cultural leadership, or is it simply accumulating branded architectural spectacles in a frantic bid for relevance? A Capital of Culture, at a Price For decades, Abu Dhabi languished in Dubai’s shadow, dismissed as the UAE’s wealthier but culturally barren…

The summer of 2026 laid bare a world structurally unprepared for the disasters it already knows are coming. During the World Cup, Europe’s host cities baked under extreme heat with little more than a shrug from the built environment: public spaces conspicuously devoid of adequate passive cooling or even basic ventilation strategies. In Japan, torrential rain triggered flood warnings, severed transport links, and prompted evacuation advisories—another iteration of a disaster script the country knows intimately, yet one that infrastructure still cannot quite absorb. Meanwhile, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake reduced Venezuelan towns to rubble, killing at least 188 and injuring over 1,500,…

When Ove Arup founded what would become the Arup Group to build the Penguin Pool at London Zoo, he probably wasn’t thinking about legacy. He certainly wasn’t imagining that his name would one day sit atop a multinational professional services firm employing around 17,000 people across more than 90 offices in 35 countries, with projects spanning over 160 nations. Decades after he stepped down from managing the company in 1970, his name still holds the top position. It’s remarkable how some founders’ names become permanently etched into their firms’ identities, while others eventually fade away or get deliberately replaced. Consider…

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…” W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming” Picture this scene: You’re standing in front of a huge slab of dark, charcoal-colored stone. It’s so black it seems to swallow the Chicago sky. Rain runs down it, but there’s no glossy shine—just this deep, endless darkness where you might expect a presidential portrait or some bold symbol. Then you step back, and you see the whole thing: a tall, striking form rising against the flat Midwest horizon. It doesn’t feel like a victory monument. It feels more like a quiet, slightly…