In October, and as part of the European music industry’s key MaMA three-day event, Youssef was invited to speak at a round-table discussing the role of music in today’s cities. Cultural actors and musicians are being given a greater role in the future, and panellists discussed how urban redevelopment can further facilitate this.

Together, Youssef and Anastasia visited Bucharest’s Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism (UAUIM) and presented highlights of YTAA’s recent and ongoing projects.

Along with other international architects and academics, Anastasia was invited to Canada and spoke at a symposium focused on the Outremont campus of the Université de Montréal, where its future was compared to international cases – Beirut and YTAA’s example of USJ was presented.

Hosted at Bucharest’s Museum of Contemporary Art – a recent and currently ongoing project of ours – as part of the city’s The White Night of Galleries combined an art exhibition with a building site and showed the works of 25 artists. The first 300 visitors were issued with safety helmets – not for the sake of the site but rather because, in the words of the organisers, “art can be tough”.

The vast scale of Hamburg’s Wilhelmsburg area presents a fundamental challenge to the contemporary city. Here, we aim to develop inhabitable volumes rather than surfaces - places genuinely capable of being used, not just spaces to be filled.

May saw a return to Italy, this time for Anastasia to present our project Villa T in the Private Housing category at Milan’s Archmarathon, an event which hosted around 10,000 architects throughout its three days.

A rare honor from France’s Academy of Architecture – in Youssef’s case for his work around the region of Bordeaux.

In April, we took part in the international Conference on Urban Peripheries in Italy at the Urban Center Bologna. Moderated by Karine Dana and Manuel Orazi, new perspectives on the exchanges in the areas of science, technology, medicine and urban planning between “urban peripheries” were opened up.

In February, Youssef was invited to Paris as a guest of the Ministry of Culture and Communication for The Interviews of Chaillot, a series of monthly interviews with French and foreign architects, where he spoke on the structure of habitats.

We found our ideal space for growth, within an old industrial building that had previously been utilized as a tannery. Read More

We attended the annual MIPIM Conference in Cannes, France during March and presented Brazza Bordeaux updates to the congress. 

We presented the Brazza Bordeaux project during the Forum des Projets Urbains at the Palais des Congrés in Paris.

During the annual Conference Marseille, we presented our projects  to an assembled audience of students and architects.

We secured a place on the steering committee for the Brazza Bordeaux project. 

Youssef’s impassioned (and multi-award winning) architectural treatise is dedicated to Beirut and delivers a declaration of love for his tormented city.