The Harvard University Graduate School of Design will host a lecture by Jordanian architect and painter Sahel Al-Hiyari on his recent work on April 11, 2007 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm in Gund Hall Piper Auditorium. This Aga Kahn Public Lecture is sponsored by the Aga Khan Program at the GSD. Principal Architect of Sahel Al Hiyari and Partners in Amman, Jordan, he received a Master of Architecture degree in Urban Design from Harvard GSD.

When he was selected by the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative to study with Pritzker Prize winner Alvaro Siza, it was noted that Al-Hiyari has always been interested in the use of light in art. It is this quality, among others, that draws him to the work of Álvaro Siza, whom he calls “a master of sculpting space and light.” Al-Hiyari’s completed projects range from a weekend house in the Jordan Valley to the Jordan Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany. One of Al-Hiyari’s recent projects, a psychologist’s office in Amman, is featured as part of the “Exploring the Edge” series on the <http://www.csbe.org/Hiyari/essay1.htm>Center for the Study of the Built Environment Web site. The article, titled “Ugly Concrete Boxes are Almost Alright” (a play on a Robert Venturi statement about Main Streets), gives us at least an inkling of why the Rolex architecture nominating panel and the advisory board (which included Frank Gehry) selected Al-Hiyari:

“He studies what most of us view as unrefined building practices; he accepts their harshness, crudity, and imperfections; he digests their vocabularies; and he uses these structures as a springboard from which he develops a new, bold, and vital architectural aesthetic. In the final result, he creates poetry out of an uninspired utilitarian reality.”

Sahel Al Hiyari is the principal architect at Sahel Al Hiyari and Partners in Amman, Jordan. He holds Bachelor Degrees in Architecture and Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He carried out post-graduate work at the School of Architecture (IUAV) at the University of Venice, where he also taught from 1993 to1995. He is a painter and has exhibited in Jordan, Lebanon, and Italy. In 2002, he was chosen as the first architect to receive the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, according to which he has been a protégé of architect Álvaro Siza of Portugal. His work has been published in a number of local and international architectural publications. It has also been exhibited in Jordan, Lebanon, Italy and the United States. He has lectured at the Jordan University of Science and Technology - Irbid, Columbia University and the AKA forum in U.A.E – Sharjah. He has served as a reviewer for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture since 2004.