ZEINA MIDANI
Portrait courtesy of Zeina Midani.
Zeina Midani is a recent graduate from Istanbul Bilgi University. Born and raised in Syria, Zeina moved to Istanbul in 2013. Since her childhood, Zeina has always loved exploring Aleppo’s beautiful neighborhoods and has always been fascinated with the city’s fabric and components. To Zeina, becoming an architect is a dream coming to life.
Today, Zeina is concerned with the lack of resources for Arabs in the architectural field. As a result, Zeina created a platform, 365 Days of Architecture, to support young architects and students. Through this platform, Zeina blogs about the built environment and various architectural projects in the Arabic language.
Where are you from?
Aleppo, Syria
What is your favorite dish?
Unpopular opinion, Bamiyeh (Okra)
What is an additional fun fact about Zeina?
Plant mom!
365 Days of Architecture and Mimaria Studio: Support, Recognition, and Hope for the Arab Community
What inspired you to study architecture?
My earliest memory of exposure to architecture was during Kindergarten where my teacher asked the lass what we want to be when we grow up. I responded, "I want to be a décor engineer." At the time, "décor engineer" was another term for architects.
Fast forward, I spent my childhood wandering around the street's fabric and diverse neighborhoods. As mentioned, I love the different experiences that the city offers: parks and how kids use it, corners and how taxis occupy it, balconies (where all of our grandparents are found). The many places in Syria and Instanbul became the theatres of my imagination. Interestingly, I would spend hours a day just replaying different scenes in my head. I want to be an architect and play a role in shaping these cities further.
Taking a step back, I put my glasses on to observe my beautiful city in action. I was constantly inspired to want to learn how to create spaces, how to design spatial elements, and how to work with the community. I wanted to take the creator role; use my design talent, listen to people, and think of innovative solutions.
Image courtesy of Zeina Midani.
Name a woman architect (preferably Arab or Middle Eastern) who most influenced you as an emerging professional? Why or How did they?
Well, the one and only Tansel Korkmaz! Tansel is a Turkish architect and professor at my university. I had the chance to work with her in my final year; meeting her was a shifting point in my practice. She changed my perspective of the field.
Tansel and her team were concerned about bringing attention to the design process; she always explained that the research process is as important as the final product. The design process is not a linear process like we learned but a divergent one. She taught us how to analyze sites, how to create relationships with different factors such as economy, politics, human daily lives, and history, and she taught us the importance of case studies. Through case studies, we look at the past to better the future.
Image courtesy of Zeina Midani.
Because of Tansel, I learned that good architecture is poetic; architecture that solves a problem. I owe it to her for not living architecture into urban design, because now I know that every intervention we design, every building we build has a relationship with the city. She taught me that our fields have a dynamic relationship, not a systematic one. Besides all that, she was one of the very few professors who heard my voice no matter where I was from or my religious beliefs; she respected me as a human being and never underestimated my opinions.
Image courtesy of Zeina Midani.
Name a favorite project completed by a Woman Architect (preferably Arab or Middle Eastern). Why is it your favorite?
Image courtesy of Zeina Midani.
Truthfully, I am ashamed to say that I do not have one. Before responding to this question, I never thought about this problem. It never occurred to me that I do not know any project that was designed by a woman architect. What hurts me is that in the last two months, I have written over 65 projects on my blog, 365 Days of Architecture and that none of the projects were designed by women. Thanks for pointing this out. From now, I will dedicate my time to learning about projects completed by women, especially Arab women. I started this blog to make a difference, and now I will try helping in raising attention to women’s role in the architectural field.
How does your culture/ethnicity affect your studies and the way you design?
I grew up in a vibrant neighborhood in Aleppo; in fact, the type we see in movies, where everyone knows one another, fills each other with a company, and helps one another at any time of need. The neighborhood is filled with small stores, wide sidewalks, pocket gardens, food carts, tall trees, and mid-rise buildings. From a little age, I was lucky to live in a place with divergent cultures, ethnicities, and religions. I learned how to interact with different people and conditions and how to respect their space. I believe I carried what I learned from living in that neighborhood to my journey through architecture. Being able to live and observe how a neighborhood operates alluded me to the type of spaces I want to create for people. I learned how to approach and design different sites according to occupants' needs while respecting their surroundings. Since designing at a neighborhood scale is my passion, I find it very difficult to zoom into smaller scale projet such as buildings.
Image courtesy of Zeina Midani.
Are there any organizations that helped you grow in architecture? How did they help you grow?
Image courtesy of Zeina Midani.
Unfortunately, in Turkey, it was difficult to find an organization that could gather Arabs for Arabs. When I first started studying in Turkey, the language was a barrier. English was not an option, and I needed to adapt to the change and learn Turkish immediately to communicate with my professors. Today, many students are facing the same problem!
For this reason, we started Mimaria Studio. Through Mimaria Studio, we help international students in Turkey close the gap between them and their professors by offering in-person and online critiques in Arabic and English. With this resource, we hope to create a new focal point for architectural practice in Turkey, space where you will find workshops, group discussions, and seminars in Arabic.
Image courtesy of Zeina Midani.
Tell us about Mimaria Studio. What inspired you to create it? What do you hope it will accomplish?
Image courtesy of Zeina Midani.
One reason my colleagues and I founded Mimaria Studio to guide international students in Turkey to close the gap between them and their professors by offering face-to-face critique and online critique in Arabic and English.
As a small initiative, today, Mimaria Studio expanded to architecture in Syria! We felt lucky that we are helping students during a challenging time that the country is facing. Additionally, another reason emerged last summer when my friends and I participated in Dewan 2020 competition. The competition was to design a youth house in Sadr City in Baghdad. During our research process, we faced a lot of difficulties in finding resources that talk about the city. We need a platform in the Arab world that is concerned with organizing workshops, discussions, and research about Arab cities. Architecture is a human field that interacts with human lives, therefore Mimaria needed to be in Arabic, a language that we can communicate with residents to understand their needs and concerns.
With Mimaria, we hope to create an Arab architectural community that supports one another, exchanges experiences, creates content in Arabic, and raises awareness of problems that we’re facing in our cities.
If you were able to talk to your younger self, what would you say?
This question is very personal to me because I recently channeled my inner child. If I talked to her, I would cuddle her and tell her to never leave the streets. I would tell her, "you are not the model they want you to be. Your religion, your background, and your culture are parts of you that shaped your character. However, they are not your only story. Being a Muslim girl doesn’t mean you’re weak and brainwashed. Being a hijabi (Muslim head covering) girl doesn’t mean you’re being forced by your parent to wear it." I would tell her to stand behind her choices and that she does not need to explain why she makes them. I would tell her that women can study in any field they wish. Architecture is not for men, and she is changing the narrative for women by choosing it. I would tell her to never stop exploring and observing; being optimistic is not foolishness. Finally, I would tell her to never leave me again and to keep guiding me through my life.
Image courtesy of Zeina Midani.
What would you want to say to the next generation of aspiring Arab women architects?
From my humble journey, I can tell you to stop listening to our communities when they say this field is for men. As women architects, we don’t need to only work as interior designers to satisfy them. In the Arab world (and in most parts of the world), men tend to associate women as only capable of being interior designers, not architects. We are capable of working on large projects, plan cities, provide lectures, and organize workshops.
We can work on anything we want in this field. So, keep working on yourself, increase your self-awareness, listen to your inner-child, read more books, attend different seminars, take part in workshops, do more researches, spend time with your families, help other women architects in your community, and of course, enjoy the journey.
Image courtesy of Zeina Midani.
In terms of rising concerns and problems (in the architectural profession) over the past year, what is one change that you wish saw would happen and still did not?
Regarding the work atmosphere, I would encourage to end “the best render competition” that is popular in the field. Stop evaluating the architectural design based on the picture’s quality. Change the young architect’s energies from collecting 3D programs to learning the truth of architecture. Raise awareness on the need of researchers in the field to recognize the importance of architects who are concerned about the future of our cities. We need to welcome young architects by creating good internship programs.
Raise awareness of the importance of the design process. An analysis is not just maps that need to be shown on jury day but are a tool to understand the site and community better to lead to better designs for the people. Teach students how to translate their analysis into architectural elements. Academia needs to form different programs and research opportunities to encourage students to interact with different fields like sociology and economy. Finally, stop considering architecture as an engineering field, we need architects with political knowledge more than chemistry knowledge.
