Amale Andraos is the Professor and Dean Emerita of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.. Andraos has taught at numerous universities including the Princeton University School of Architecture, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the University of Pennsylvania Design School and the American University. in Beirut. Her recent design studios and seminar have focused on the Arab City, which has become the subject of a series of symposia entitled “Architecture and Representation” held at Studio-X Amman in 2013 and at the university’s New York campus in the Fall of 2014. Her publications include the recent 49 Cities, a re-reading of 49 visionary plans through an ecological lens, Above the Pavement, the Farm!, and the forthcoming Architecture and Representation: the Arab City.. Andraos is a co-founder of WORKac, a 35-person architectural firm based in New York that focuses on architectural projects which re-invent the relationship between urban and natural environments. Since the founding of WORKac in 2003, principals Amale Andraos and Dan Wood have achieved international acclaim for projects such as the recently completed master plan for the New Holland Island Cultural Center in St. Petersburg, Russia, Wieden+Kennedy’s 50,000 sq ft, three story New York offices, the Blaffer Museum in Houston, Texas, the Children’s Museum of the Arts in Manhattan and the Edible Schoolyard at P.S. 216 in Gravesend, Brooklyn. Currently, in Africa, the firm is building its winning competition entry for a new 20,000 square meter Conference Center in Libreville, Gabon. Targeting LEED Gold certification, the project is expected to be completed in 2016 and will host diplomatic meetings, including the next African Union summit for heads-of-state. In addition, the firm is currently designing a second Edible Schoolyard at P.S. 7 in East Harlem and exploring the future of work, art, and technology with the design of a new home for the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in downtown Brooklyn.. Amale Andraos received her Masters Degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and her B.Arch from McGill University in Montreal. She was born in Beirut, Lebanon and lived in Saudi Arabia, France, Canada and the Netherlands where she worked for OMA/Rem Koolhaas until she moved to New York in 2002. She serves on the board of the Architectural League of New York, the Advisory Board of the Arab Center for Architecture in Beirut, currently being assembled, and is a member of the faculty steering committee for the Columbia Global Centers | Middle East.
