Browsing by Author "Megahed, Yasser"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Has Mosque Design Really Developed? Notes on the Hidden Complexities of Mosques’ Architectural Brief
    (Abdullatif Al Fozan Award For Mosque Architecture & Institut Terjemahan & Buku Malaysia Berhad, 2019-11-25) Megahed, Yasser
    Mosques have become a rich pool for architects to show their skills in expressing the sacred in the Islamic culture and religion. Still, while the architectural outcomes of mosques have started to look radically different; not much seems to change in how architects are tackling mosque’s architectural brief—the brief of a specific building typology that fulfils particular spatial and functional targets. In contrast, mosques have a rich dynamic function. In addition to dealing with users from different genders and age groups, mosques’ function varies significantly through the day, during the week, and in different times associated with Islamic rituals. Architects, however, have often reacted to the complexity of the everyday elements of mosque brief by applying the same simplistic recipe of a generic multipurpose open space. This paper, therefore, displays a provocative argument critiquing the current formal and visual development of mosque architecture as insufficient for a critical evolution of this building typology. Using a critical analysis of literature on mosque’s functionality as well as the author’s observations on different mosques in the Middle East and the UK, the paper will illustrate through two elements in the mosque brief (the entry space and the dynamic prayer hall) certain complexities associated with the mosque architecture that can act as a base for creativity in mosque design. The paper draws on the works of two scholars: the theorist and architect Jeremy Till around contingency in architecture and the creative brief as well as the work of the philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre on the production of space. The paper ends with speculations on mosque architectural brief as a clue for changing the future of mosque design from being a ‘hard space’ with photographic qualities to become a social ‘lived space’ that celebrates human agency.
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    On Normative Architecture. Notes on the Domination of the Technical-rational Mode of Thinking on Mainstream Architectural Production: A Historical Highlight
    (Materia Arquitectura, 2021-04-30) Megahed, Yasser
    The term ‘mainstream’ or ‘normative’ practice is often used to describe the model of architectural practice that is often generic in its architectural ambition and tends to appeal to the economic rules of the market. This model of practice follows what can be called a 'technical-rational ideology' that prioritizes discourses of efficiency, audit, and profitable and timely delivery. This paper will highlight some moments in the history of architectural production that paved the way for the domination of the technical-rational ideology on contemporary architectural production, coming across ideas from Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand and Leslie Martin, and Design Methods that were influential in shaping mainstream architectural practice. The paper concludes with speculations on the future trajectory of the architectural profession in the light of the current prevalence of this ideology.
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    On research by design
    (Cambridge University Press, 2017-12) Megahed, Yasser
    Early issues of arq in the mid-1990s were preoccupied with the possibilities for researching architecture through design: how design research might be constituted and communicated, and – practically for architecture schools at that time – how design might be counted as research in the newly-introduced metrics used to judge research quality in UK Universities. Debates around design research in arq in the 1990s reflected uncertainties about its position in both practice and academic culture at that time. Since then, design research has gained traction, becoming increasingly accepted and acquiring greater capital in architectural academe. Key texts in architectural design research are increasingly leaving behind the question ‘is design considered research or not?’ to search instead for how to secure the status of design as a rigorous mode of academic inquiry. There is increasing confidence in the architectural field about the potential and power of design as a research method. Yet the notion of design research in architecture remains broad, with a diversity of approaches echoed in a diversity of distinct but overlapping terminologies. Taking its cue from arq's early focus on design research, this paper sketches-out its contemporary methodological landscape in architecture, surveying key sources in design research scholarship.
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    On value conflicts: negotiating difference in the renovation of historic buildings
    (Green Line Institute, 2017-06) Connolly, K.; Megahed, Yasser; Sharr, Adam
    This paper examines the “value conflicts” played out between multiple participants involved in the restoration of Newcastle University’s Armstrong Building. Constructed between 1887 and 1906, the Armstrong Building has witnessed a number of transformations and alterations in the century it has been occupied. The paper will focus on describing the design proposals developed in the most recent transformation, ongoing since 2010, for which the authors are appointed ‘concept architects’. These renovation works have involved collaborations between a number of stakeholders, each with their own value systems and approaches to the conservation and rehabilitation of the building. As such, numerous “value conflicts” have occurred throughout the project. This paper sets out to narrate examples of these conflicts, accounting for the design approach we adopted for the renovation of the building in relation to the opposing values of other project protagonists, and the challenges and opportunities these conflicts enabled.
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    Practiceopolis: From an Imaginary City to a Graphic Novel
    (Taylor and Francis, 2018-03-12) Megahed, Yasser; Sharr, Adam
    This essay is about a graphic novel produced as the culmination of a creative practice research project. It dramatizes real-life exchanges from project management meetings held during the conduct a live architectural project in the UK, re-siting those exchanges to an imaginary city as high-stakes public debates. The graphic novel depicts these exchanges as value-conflicts in order to examine the ideologies at work among architects and other actors in the construction industry. The research represents a special creative space that challenges design research practices in order to create new strategies and methods for design as scholarship.
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    Practiceopolis: Journeys through the contemporary architectural profession
    (Interstices Journal of Architecture and related arts, 2017-05) Megahed, Yasser; Sharr, Adam; Farmer, Graham
    The contemporary architectural profession is dominated by a technical-rational culture of practice. The term refers to commercially-driven practices that are often associated with the production of buildings by or for multinational corporations and tend to echo their values. This research interrogates the imperatives of this domination on the original values of the architectural profession. It builds upon two premises: firstly; mapping different cultures of practice constituting the contemporary understanding of the profession; secondly, questioning the increasing closeness between the values of the architectural profession and the instrumentalist values of other actors in the building industry. To do so, the research introduces the imaginary city of Practiceopolis as a methodological device that allows the modelling of contemporary cultures of practice and dramatises their dialogues. The research ends with propositions regarding the particular values of the architectural profession and proposes a critical-instrumental mindset to explore how these values could be defined, communicated, and marketed.
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    Practiceopolis: Stories from the Architectural Profession
    (Routledge, 2020-07-27) Megahed, Yasser
    With the increasing specialisation in the process of contemporary building production, the value and the role of architects have come into question in construction discourse. From literature about architects losing leadership position in the industry to others arguing that architects must follow the more specialised members of the building team, this book is illustrating the architects’ point of view in this debate, showing one important dimension of the story of building construction. The book is a story about the contemporary architectural profession, in which it acts as the protagonist in the form of an imaginary city called Practiceopolis. Practiceopolis is a fictive city-state, located within a union of states representing different members in the construction domain that together form ‘Constructopolis—the Confederation of the Building Industry’. The novel narrates quasi-realistic stories that exaggerate the architectural ‘everyday’ and the tacit, in order to make it prominent and tangible. They depict and dramatise the value conflicts between the different cultures of practising architecture and between the architectural profession and other members of the building industry as political conflicts occurring around the future of Practiceopolis. The book uses this metaphorical world to examine different ideologies at work among architects and other members of the construction industry and provoke questions about the largely tacit assumptions which inform them. The novel ends in the tradition of dystopian worlds common in a certain strand of graphic novels with near-future speculation that extrapolates present contemporary conditions to warn against a substantial change to the architectural profession.