Asma Bukhammas
Bio
Asma Bukhammas is an architect and educator based in Dubai, committed to reshaping the landscape of architectural education. Her teaching career at Zayed University sparked a deep interest in challenging the Western-centric focus often found in design curricula. A turning point in her academic journey came when she collaborated with a colleague on a classroom-based study, which revealed the need for more inclusive and regionally relevant materials. This experience has shaped her mission to bring lesser-known architectural figures from the region into the academic conversation, championing their contributions to the field.
Beyond the classroom, Asma played a role in shaping the future of architectural education at Zayed University as part of a small task-force that developed the university’s new Bachelor of Architecture program, which launched in Fall 2024. Working with a small team from 2017 to 2020, she contributed to creating a program that focuses on the region.
As an educator, Asma’s passion lies in the dynamics of the design studio, where she encourages her students to question the representation—or lack thereof—of female architects and regional voices in the material discussed in class and beyond. She believes that architectural education should reflect the identities and cultures of its students, and her research aims to build a bridge between the stories of regional architects and the classroom. This dedication led her to explore the work of unsung architectural heroes in the Gulf, a project currently underway as part of the Zayed University research cluster “Desert Culture.” This research challenges established criteria for architectural success, advocating for more inclusive methods that recognize the value of oral histories and community-based knowledge.
One of Asma’s most recent projects, supported by a RIF Grant, is a paper titled “Beyond the Grand Narrative of Al Bastakiya: Ayesha Al Bastaki and the Windtower Houses of Old Dubai.” Drawing on the memory and community knowledge of Ayesha Al Bastaki, a long-practicing architect who lived in Al Bastakiyya in the 1980s, this work foregrounds the voices of women from Al Bastakiyya - arguably for the first time - providing counter-narratives to one of the most studied areas in Dubai. More importantly, the research questions the very methods by which architectural histories are written, advocating for a more accessible and regionally reflective architectural discourse. Asma has presented her research at prestigious platforms such as The Professions’ Extension: Architecture beyond Architects in the Modern Middle East at Princeton University, the annual conference of the College Art Association, and the Gulf Research Meeting at Cambridge University.
You can read her latest publication in the link below. While her paper was presented at prestigious institutions and published by the well-known Q1 journal International Journal of Architectural Research, Asma prides herself on the accessibility of her work. She strives to write critically yet humbly, without pretension, making her research accessible to people outside the field as well as to young students.
Office
Dubai Academic City, Dubai
Phone:
+971 4 402 1513
