Marie-Hélène Contal (born in Nancy, France) graduated from the École d’Architecture de Nancy, and from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. She was the editor of the review Archi-Créé (1985–91) and the co-curator of exhibitions, among them 40 under 40, which was devoted to new French architecture (1990). She entered the cabinet of Emile Biasini, Secretary of State for the Grands Projects and their Mission (1991–2000), where her responsibilities included the prefiguration of the Palais de Tokyo and the new Cinémathèque Française, both in Paris. In 2001, she joined Jean-Louis Cohen for the feasibility design of the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine in Paris.

Her curatorships at the Cité include: Voralberg, a constructive provocation (2003), which focused on pioneering Austrian green architecture and strongly influenced French discourse, Living Ecological – section International (2009), Reenchanting the World (2014), and the touring annual exhibitions Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2009–22).

Contal was an auditor of the French-American Foundation and of the Palladio Foundation and was elected to the French Académie d’Architecture in 2018. From 2016 to 2019 she served as President of the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Lyon and was appointed dean of the École Spéciale d’Architecture de Paris in 2023.

Other positions she has held include: Scientific Committee of the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, Board of Daw’an Mud Brick Architecture Foundation, Urban Strategy Council of Engie (2007–18), Board of Solar Decathlon Europe (2014), and Nomination Committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2015).

Spela Hudnik has been working in architectural practice, research, and teaching for more than 20 years. She graduated from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana (1986) and continued her postgraduate studies at the Akademie der bildenden Künste, and Angewandte Kunst in Vienna with prof. Michael Sorkin and Peter Sloterdijk. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Ljubljana (2003). She also received Recognition for Important Works of Art from the University of Ljubljana (2013).

She is the co-founder of the architectural studio MONOCHROME ARCHITECTS (1986) together with Peter Vezjak. The field of activity focuses primarily on the study of global impacts on spatial transformations, with an emphasis on social and cultural context, heritage, border areas, postindustrial areas, and military architecture – bunkers. The research and pedagogical practice is based on an interdisciplinary approach and in cooperation with international institutions. She is currently involved in research for the World Health Organization (WHO), HEI Transformer, European Cultural City GO2025.

She is internationally published and represented in Slovenia as well as abroad through exhibitions, research, critical debates, writing, workshops, and lectures. Her innovative, experimental, and multidisciplinary approach and critical local and global debates were internationally recognized in the Architecture Biennale Ljubljana (IABL) series, which she founded and organized between 2000 and 2008.

The studio operates in an international environment with architectural projects in Klagenfurt, Paris, London, Portugal, and Croatia. Its works have been awarded and published in many international journals. She has also been a member of the Global Scientific Awards for Sustainable Architecture in Paris for more than 10 years. She participates regularly in the CA2RE and Ph.D. programs as a jury member, reviewer, and chair of the panel. In the last few years, she has organized a Ph.D. International Seminar together with the Universities of Lisbon, Porto and Manchester. She is a visiting professor in many European Universities including Lisbon, Paris, Trieste, Gdansk, Copenhagen, Fiume… She regularly leads international workshops in Europe. Her current position is at the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Architecture.

UIA JUROR

Ashraf Salama is Professor of Architecture and Urbanism and Head of the Department of Architecture and the Built Environment, University of Northumbria at Newcastle, England. He is co-Director of the UIA Education Commission (2020-present) and co-Reporter of the UNESCO/UIA Validation Council for Architectural Education (2020-2023). He is an honorary Professor of Architecture at the University Putra Malaysia.
He holds BSc. MSc. and PhD in architecture and has received his education at Al Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt and North Carolina State University, Raleigh, United States.
Professor Salama has chaired four schools of architecture over the past 30 years in MIU, Cairo, Egypt (1996-2001), Qatar University, Doha, Qatar (2009-2014), University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom (2014-2020).

Securing more than £2.5 millions of funded research, he has published over 250 research outputs in the international refereed press. His books includeThe Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South, with Harriss & Lara (2022); Transformative Pedagogy in Architecture and Urbanism  (2021); Architectural Excellence in Islamic Societies, with El-Ashmouni (2020); Building Migrant Cities in the Gulf: Urban Transformations in the Middle East, with Wiedmann (2019); Spatial Design Education: New Directions for Pedagogy in Architecture and Beyond(2015 &2016);Architecture Beyond Criticism: Expert Judgment and Performance Evaluation, with Preiser, Davis, Hardy (2014); and Demystifying Doha: On Architecture and Urbanism in an Emerging City, with Wiedmann (2013 & 2016).

Professor Salama is the chief editor of the Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research. He is the Director of the UIA Award for Innovation in Architectural Education and was a jury member for several international competitions in Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Doha and Dubai, and has served as a technical jury member for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in Geneva, Switzerland.

Ashraf Salama is the UIA 2017 Recipient of Jean Tschumi Prize for Excellence in Architectural Education and Criticism. He is a licensed architect in Egypt practiced in Egypt (1987-92) and has been architectural and urban design consultant to several authorities and development agencies in the Middle East and was the Director of Research and Consulting at Adams Group Architects (2001-2004), Charlotte, North Carolina, United States.

GUEST JURY 2025

Salma Samar Damluji is a British-Iraqi architect, a graduate of the AA School of Architecture, London 1977 and the Royal College of Art, London, where she obtained her Ph.D. in 1987.

Damluji worked with the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy in Cairo during 1975-6 and 1984-5.

She was appointed Professor of the Binladin Chair for Architecture in the Islamic World at the American University of Beirut (2013-2024) and works on post-conflict reconstruction projects in Yemen.

Between 2001 and 2004, she served as Advisor to the Chair of the Public Works Department in Abu Dhabi and Head of the Technical Office of the Chairman. In 2007, she co-founded Daw‘an Architecture Foundation for earth construction with colleagues in Hadramut, Yemen. The Foundation was actively involved in reconstruction efforts in Hadramut, Yemen, in partnership with the Cultural Emergency Response (CER) and The Prince Claus Fund, the Netherlands, from 2008 to the present. Since 2019, the collaboration extended to the Cultural Protection Fund of The British Council, UK, and more recently, to the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH), Switzerland.

In 2022, she established Dawan Eco Arch Collaborative with colleagues in London to expand her work outside Yemen and the region.

Damluji was awarded the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in 2012, received the Académie d’Architecture Silver Restoration Award in 2015 and became a member of the French Académie d’Architecture in 2017. In November 2022, she received the 2020-2021 Silver Middle East Africa Regional Holcim Award for projects completed over 2019- 2021 in Yemen.

She is a prolific author with publications that include: The Architecture of Yemen and its Reconstruction (2007 & 2021), Hassan Fathy: Earth & Utopia (2018), The Architecture of the UAE (2006), The Architecture of Oman (1998), and Zillij, The Art of Moroccan Ceramics, with John Hedgecoe (1993).

Her projects can be reviewed at www.dawanarchitecturefoundation.org.

GUEST JURY 2026

James Steele is an architect who received his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD in Urban Planning from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. After receiving his Master’s degree, Steele worked for Louis Kahn, and several other offices in Philadelphia, before opening his own office there.

In 1980, he joined King Faisal University Saudi Arabia, and taught there until 1988. During that time, he published his first book Hassan Fathy, with Academy Editions, London and then became an Editor at Academy and a Lecturer at the Prince of Wales’s School of Architecture, at Magdalen College Oxford. While there, he published The Hassan Fathy Collection: a Catalogue of Visual Documents at the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and was the Editor of two Aga Khan Award books, Architecture for a Changing world, and Architecture for Islamic Societies Today as well as The Architecture of the Contemporary Mosque, with Ismail Serageldin.

He joined the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles in 1991, eventually teaching all levels of Design Studio as well as the History and Theory sequence and introduced Electives on Islamic and Asian architecture. He also organized the first semester abroad program in Asia in 1998 and administered it until 2014, before founding and directing a Full Semester Program in South America, from 2015 to 2017.

He has been a guest critic and speaker at universities in the United States and internationally, and was named Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Distinguished Professor in 2014. He also received a Fulbright Scholar’s Grant in 2016 to study Minangkabau architecture in Sumatra. He left USC in 2020 as Professor Emeritus with Tenure, to teach at Prince Sultan University in Riyadh.

He is the author of more than 50 books, including:  An Architecture for People: The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy; Sustainable Architecture:Principles, Paradigms, and Case Studies; Ecological Architecture: Critical History;The Architecture of Rasem Badran and The Encyclopedia of Homes through World History. His latest book is Contemporary Japanese Architecture: Tracing the Next Generation, by Routledge & Kegan Paul.

GUEST JURY 2026

Boonserm Premthada began his career as an educator in 1996 at Chulalongkorn University where he remained until 2022. In 2023 he was Dean’s Visiting Assistant Professor at Columbia university, GSAPP and Visiting Assistant Professor at The University of Hong Kong.  

In 2003, Boonserm founded the BANGKOK PROJECT STUDIO. Premthada’s works focus on nature and humanity and convey this message through materials, structures, and construction processes. 

The social intenset of his architecture is equally significant. Premthada’s interest in supporting local communities is also evident in his community – focused “‘Artisans Ayutthaya: the Womanen’s Restaurant”’. To complete this restaurant, the architect employed overlooked and repurposed materials. This restaurant promotes sustainable architecture, community values, and local traditions; it is proof of the women’s determination to preserve the cuisine and craft of Ayutthaya.  

“Elephant World’” is a government project that seeks to provide a source of stable income for the Kui people, an ethnic group in Surin, north – eastern Thailand, and their elephants.  

Boonserm Premthada was born and raised in a slum in the heart of Bangkok, and is 70 percent deaf. His having never studied abroad keeps his ideas free of outside influence like “a wild orchid” that grows without the shade or domination of theories. He uses the fundamental asset of humans, and non- human intuition, in his design. With a keen perspective as a carpenter’s son, he was taught to be realistic, which helped him accurately estimate the scale and proportion of a work. This influenced his design approach differently from the methods that are generally taught in architecture schools.