Prospective students will be excited to know that our line-up of visiting professors for the 2013-14 edition of the masters course features new faculty member Nabeel Hamdi, a renowned architect and professor described as one of the pioneers of participatory planning.
After obtaining his degree at the Architectural Association in London in 1968, the Afghanistan-born architect worked for the Greater London Council, and his award-winning housing projects established his reputation in participatory design and planning. An advocate of small-scale change at grass-roots level, Hamdi has consulted on participatory action planning and upgrading of slums in cities to all major international development agencies, and to NGOs worldwide. He founded the Masters course in Development Practice at Oxford Brookes University in 1992 and is the author of several landmark publications, including Small Change, Housing Without Houses and The Placemaker’s Guide to Building Community.
We have to do our practical work in a way that adds strategic value
We leave you with a video that can serve as an introduction to Hamdi’s work and approach, in which which he introduces his book, The Placemaker’s Guide to Building Community.
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Last year marked the twentieth anniversary of the Masters degree course founded by Nabeel Hamdi at Oxford Brookes University, in honor of which the university launched an annual lecture series that Hamdi hopes “will inspire people to “disturb the existing order of things and with vision and common sense induce lasting and positive change”.