AKPIA 2025 Spring Lecture Series: An Evening With: Raafat Majzoub and Nicolas Fayad: Book Launch: Beyond Ruins: Reimagining Modernism

Raafat Majzoub is an architect, artist, writer and educator based between Boston and Beirut. He is the editor-in-chief of the Dongola Architecture Series, co-editor of Beyond Ruins (ArchiTangle, 2024) and Design to Live (MIT Press, 2021). He is the co-founder of award-winning The Outpost magazine and creative director of The Khan: The Arab Association for Prototyping Cultural Practices. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture and Lecturer at the Program in Art, Culture and Technology at MIT. Majzoub has previously lectured at the American University of Beirut, MISK Art Institute, Ashkal Alwan, among others, and has published and exhibited his art internationally.

Nicolas Fayad is an architect, educator and founding partner of EAST Architecture Studio, an award-winning collective practice committed to architectural design and experimental research. Under the banner of preservation as practice, the studio yields innovative built environments of various scales ranging from master planning to interior design and adaptive reuse, engaging contemporary society with traditional culture. The studio is a recipient of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and winner of the first edition of the AlMusalla Prize.

The studio's work is a testament to a visionary approach and sensitive interpretation of history and culture, such as the acclaimed Niemeyer Guest House Renovation in Tripoli, Lebanon. Their projects have been showcased internationally, namely at the 17th Architecture Biennale in Venice, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and the Chicago History Museum, and widely published in the likes of Wallpaper Magazine, The Architectural Review, Architectural Record and the New York Review of Architecture (NYRA).

Nicolas was recently awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award, offered by the American University of Beirut, honouring his achievements. In 2021, he was a visiting critic at MIT, where he co-instructed a graduate architecture and urban design option studio 'Trauma Urbanism', using Beirut as a site of investigation in post-blast reconstruction strategies. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Practice in Architecture at the American University of Beirut.

In this talk, Raafat Majzoub and Nicolas Fayad present their new book Beyond Ruins: Reimagining Modernism(ArchiTangle, 2024), a publication that explores the potential of modern architecture renovation in the Global South to address contemporary heritage challenges, question renovation trends, and reveal gaps in historicization and archiving. Beyond Ruins reflects on the need for new architectural operations due to a lack of infrastructure and emphasizes discussions on craft, manufacturing, growth, aging, and hybridity.

At the heart of the book is the renovation of the Oscar Niemeyer Guest House in Tripoli, Lebanon—an Aga Khan Award–winning project—by East Architecture Studio where Nicolas is a partner alongside Charles Kettaneh. This intervention serves as a lens through which broader questions of preservation, authorship, and postcolonial legacy are examined. 

The talk will feature excerpts and perspectives from the book and build on them to include East Architecture Studio’s recent work, including AlMusalla at the Islamic Arts Biennial in Jeddah this year, reflecting on architecture as a practice of mutual translation—one that listens to context, engages with materiality, and foregrounds local narratives.