Mohamed Makiya

Mohamed Makiya was an Iraqi architect, planner, author and educator. He was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1914 to a family of clothing merchants. He studied architecture and civic design at Liverpool University and King's College, Cambridge, where he obtained his PhD in 1946. He returned to Baghdad in the same year and established Makiya & Associates, an architectural and planning consultancy, which later opened branch offices in Bahrain, Oman and London. He designed more than 100 buildings across Iraq and other countries, including religious, educational, commercial and residential projects. He also taught at the University of Baghdad, where he founded the first department of architecture in Iraq in 1959. He was an active member of the Iraqi Academy of Sciences and the Royal Institute of British Architects. He published many books and articles on Mesopotamian language and culture, and translated several western works into Arabic. He was awarded the Aga Khan Chairman Award in 1986 and the Tamayouz Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. He left Iraq in 1983 and settled in London, where he continued his academic and artistic work. He died on 19 July 2015 in London, at the age of 101. He is considered one of the pioneers of Iraqi architecture and one of the first Middle Eastern planners.