• IWLab is at Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris for a workshop on Cognitive Mapping and a lecture on building tactics in Syria and the MENA region. Gratitude goes to and Dr. Jana Revedin and Dr. Marie-Hélène Contal for their kind invitation and for introducing us to the amazing students at the school.

  • Our Lab recieves the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture 2024: Architecture is Education.

    Each year, The Global Award for Sustainable Architecture™, under the patronage of UNESCO, recognizes five architects who share the principles of sustainable development and a participatory architectural approach to the needs of society, in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

    As a symbol of its pioneering role, it is notable that five architects who have received the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture have since been honored with the Pritzker Architecture Prize:

    Wang Shu (GA 2007, Pritzker 2012),

    Alejandro Aravena (GA 2008, Pritzker 2016),

    Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi (GA 2007, Pritzker 2018), Anne Lacaton & Jean-Philippe Vassal (GA 2018, Pritzker 2021) and Diébédo Francis Kéré (GA 2009, Pritzker 2022)

    Since the inception of our Lab, we emphasize on our participatory approach as a mode for us to gorw and learn. We give our heartfelt thanks to all the individuals and organisations that have been part of our journey!

  • on October 9th, 2023 Wesam Al Asali , Co founder of IWLab gave an online webinar titled Architectural Innovation in the Digital World, New Approaches to Traditional Structures as part of ArchiNet’s 4th edition of Architecture Week.

  • “Cylinders of soap, mud, and pottery: on cultures of making beyond architecture”, Nadi Abusaada & Wesam Al Asali on June 20th 2023

  • Urgent sustenance , Wesam Al Asali 6th to 14th of May

  • IWlab is featured in Round City as a finalist for Tamayouz Excellence Award's Mohamad Makiya Prize 2020. In this interview, we talk about how we started our practice in 2009, and how we sustained its activities during the last ten (hard) years. Interview in Arabic and English. 

  • We are happy and proud that IWlab is nominated for the Mohamed Makiya Award for Architecture 2020 "The Middle Eastern Architectural Person of the Year", along with many institutions and personalities that contribute to the development of architecture in the Middle East. This nomination makes us more determind to keep working on pushing the model for architectural practice outside the traditional framework, to be part of society with its variations, concerns, and differences. 

  • Our lab co-founder Wesam Al Asali has been featured in Qisetna in Focus - Profiling Syrian artists, musicians, writers and actors now living and working in the diaspora. To read the interview: Arabic , English 

  • Our lab co-founder Iyas Shahin has received the Culture Resource Production Awards 2020 for his visual art project: M³ Damascus: Borders, Memory, Time.

  • This chapter from our lab is published in the book Urban Heritage Along the Silk Roads. It extracts the model of "the builder" in the late Ottoman rule in Syria and its transformation into today's building practices. It also extrapolates this model into a possible future role of everyday construction in shaping Damascus. The work was originally presented in Silk Cities in 2017. 

  • Newly published article. Living on the move, dwelling between temporality and permanence in Syria

  • The book is a result of a workshop in Damascus that focused on contexts of scarcities and informalities. In this particular context, scarcity is not about materials and resources but about social representation

  • We are very excited to have shared our thoughts about design, craft and informality in the annual conference of the Arab council for social science in Beirut.

  • IWlab worked with master artisans Salvador Gomis and Jesus Gomis on developing a vocational program for trainees in Santa Pola, Alicante, Spain. The work was done for the public agency: Service of Employment and Training in Valencia (SERVEF).

  • Wesam is Joining Emergency Architecture and Human Right (EAHR) to build a school in Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan. EAHR's project (100 Classroom for Refugee in the Middle East) aims to provide good quality learning spaces for displaced children in the region. The schools to be build with earth tiles using vaulting technique.

  • Wesam Inteviews with Architects and Plannars in IUAV, Venice. Wesam was a principal tutor in the WAVE2017 Workshop-Syria the making of the future. See his disucssion video with Simone Sfriso from TAMassociati

  • Wesam's Project In situ: Tools and Technology in Traditional Architecture won the Tile of Spain Award - student projects category.

  • Wesam Asali's work of traditional construction and technology was featured in the website of the Department of Architecture - University of Cambridge. The work was conducted as part of Wesam's Mphil at the department and was awarded the Morgan Sindall Prize Award for attention to the mode of construciton, selection of materials, the likely impact of the building on the environment, and its sustainability. 

  • Architect Iyas Shahine depicts architectural changes taking place in Damascus. These changes are reflected in their true form by showing their effects. The project covers several existing and future real estate projects that supposedly aim at developing the city. However, we do not know whether this aim will be achieved.  Read More

  • iw-lab establishes Urbegony: Architects without Borders - Syria, with students and architects in Damascus and other cities in Syria. Urbegony is a group of specialists interested and concerned with urbanization and architecture that observes spatial, urban, and architectural changes of the built and social environment. The importance of the observation comes from the need to document these rapid changes, learning from them, and switching from treating them with a reaction to treating them with pioneering responsible actions.

  • Wesam has been in Cambridge University for 10 days to work with the traditional architecture department in the school on his research project.

    The project focuses on the rural areas in Syria and on the diversity of the typologies of the traditional rural houses. The traditional rural houses is a raw subject of a rich study; it has diverse prototypes, it still exists in many areas with many contemporary interventions and it lacks serious previous studies in literature. Therefore, studying vernacular rural architecture of Syria in now a need while studying how this architecture can contribute in the future understanding of post-war development is a need and a target in the same time.