Dr Fadi Shayya

School of Science, Engineering & Environment

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Contact Details

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Current positions

Lecturer in Architecture & Urbanism

Biography

Dr Fadi Shayya is a transdisciplinary scholar and consultant working at the intersection of spatial and architectural theory, science and technology studies, design thinking, and the philosophy of technical thought. He uses the tools of architecture, urbanism, ethnography, and networks to theorise and speculate about sociotechnical and eco-infrastructural cosmologies.

He is based at the University of Salford as a Lecturer in Architecture & Urbanism. He serves as a UKRI Talent Peer Review College member and the University of Salford’s Impact Co-Lead for REF 2028 UOA 13 (Architecture, Built Environment and Planning). He also serves as a member of the University’s Race Equity Group, and earlier on the peer review committee for the Science Trak of the UIA World Congress of Architects. In 2023, he was selected as a respondent among a planetary cohort of respondents for the AFFIRMATIONS discussion series curated and organized by Columbia University’s GSAPP.

He is a licensed architect with the Order of Engineers and Architects-Beirut. For ten years, he practised and consulted on architecture, urban design, master planning, and international development in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, KSA, Lebanon, Oman, and UAE with Dar Al-Handasah (as LEED Green Associate), UNESCWA (as Associate Human Settlements Officer), and others.

Areas of Research

Fadi’s transdisciplinary research and pedagogy are concerned with space, mobilities, agency, power, militarisation, and innovation; he advocates realist and pragmatist approaches to tracing the relational politics of the proposed/built/ruined environments. His research studies breakdowns, survivability, sociotechnical associations, and design/machine ethnographies. His research-informed teaching focuses on mobile architectures, landscape strategies, site-specific practices, and developing the concepts of “terraining” and “site-ing.” So far, he published chapters and short articles on the politics of war, memorialisation, and public space and contributed to festivals and films about Beirut. He is the editor of At the Edge of the City: Reinhabiting Public Space Toward the Recovery of Beirut’s Horsh Al-Sanawbar (2010) and the awardee of the 2008 Competition for Innovative Good Governance in the Public Sector (Basil Fuleihan Foundation, Lebanon + Columbia University).

Through active engagement with artists, non-profits, citizen groups, and policy analysts, he founded and directed the Beirut-based research collaborative Discursive Formations (2008-2013), advised non-profits on design strategy, and led the operations’ development for the visual communication collectives Visualizing Impact and Visualizing Palestine. His research and advocacy work on Beirut’s urban park and post-war urbanism had instrumental societal impacts for revitalizing debates on collective memory and policy discussions on urban citizenship; it was featured in eight languages for local and international news media. He is a member of the Arab Center for Architecture – an archival institution concerned with modern urban design, architecture, design, and planning in the Arab region.

Areas of Supervision

Social Studies of Architecture, Architectural Humanities, Urban Studies, Public Space, Master Planning, Urban Design, Regional/Landscape Planning, Philosophy of Technical Thought, Digital Practices, Spatial Studies, Critical Military Studies, War/Post-war Geographies, Mobilities, Design Approaches, Ethnography, Visual Methods, Counter Cartography, Digital Humanities

Teaching Qualifications and Recognitions Publications

Teaching

Fadi teaches in the Master of Architecture programme, leads the Second-year BSc (Hons) Architecture, convenes the Level 5 interdisciplinary design studio (architecture, interior architecture, architectural engineering courses), and supervises PhD theses and Master dissertations within the School of Science, Engineering and Environment. Previously, he led the module strand of spatio-structural assemblies for first, second, and third-year BSc (Hons) Architectural Engineering. He holds an Advance HE Fellowship [FHEA] and previously taught at the University of Manchester, the Manchester School of Architecture, the Parsons School of Design, and the American University of Beirut.

Current Modules - Master of Architecture:
- L7 Design Studio 2 “Urban Ecologies”
- L7 Design Studio 1 “Performative Technologies - Material Matters”

Current Modules - BSc Architecture + BSc Interior Architecture + BSc Architectural Engineering:
- L6 Dissertation Research Project: "EAT Group: Ethnography, Archives, Translations"
- L5 Design Studio 2b "A New Design Cosmology"
- L5 Design Studio 2a “Designing Environmental Future-Pasts”

Qualifications and Recognitions

Qualifications

  • PhD Architecture

    2016 - 2021

  • MA Theories of Urban Practice

    2014 - 2016

  • Master of Urban Design

    2004 - 2006

  • Bachelor of Architectural Engineering

    1997 - 2002

Recognitions

  • Member, UIA World Congress of Architects Peer Review Committee

  • First Place Award in the Competition for Innovative Good Governance in the Public Sector

Publications

Publications

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