Architecture & Design have the power to transform lives.
To achieve this, the disciplines must be approached with inherent optimism and a humble pursuit of knowledge.
Architecture & Design are ultimately both earthly and human. In this sense, they must strive for a balance that respects both aspects of their common but dual nature, ensuring neither endangers the earthy or the human.
Mazen Sakr is an architect, designer and educator based in Cambridge, MA. Mazen is a Principal at AW-ARCH and a Lecturer on Architecture & Design at Boston University.
As a Principal at AW-ARCH in Cambridge, Mazen has worked on and lead projects such as the award-winning Gemma Astronomical Observatory in NH, The Tina and Hamid Moghadam Building, an addition to I.M. Pei’s Greene Building on the MIT campus and “Left of Passage – Right of Passage,” an installation in Amman, Jordan that explored the idea of movement through the lens of the complex historical and geological site of Wadi Rum. Other projects at AW include the renovation of the Knafel Center at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, Harvard University; Ankara Office Tower in Ankara, Turkey; a new urban master plan for Winchester, MA; and the award-winning Community Rowing Boathouse in Allston, MA.
As a Lecturer at Boston University, Mazen established two new studio courses on design thinking and architecture through the joint collaboration of the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of History of Arts and Architecture and The College of Fine Arts . Both courses focus on the production of architecture thru the lens of descriptive geometry, representation-composition, and arbitrary spatial constructs. Mazen has served on juries for numerous architectural schools, including Harvard University, American University of Beirut, Northeastern University, University of Utah, Roger Williams, and Kent State University.
Mazen was born and raised in Lebanon at the height of the Lebanese civil war. He, like many of his ‘war generation’ colleagues, grew up in a tumultuous country painted with complexities and contradictions. He spent the first 20 years of his life in Lebanon, two of them studying architecture at the “Institut National Des Beaux Arts” before abruptly immigrating for the United States in 2000. He re-started his architecture studies at Kent State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Architecture with Distinction and was recipient of the Alpha Rho Chi Bronze Medal for Leadership and Service and the Faculty Design Award. He then continued his studies at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, receiving the Walker-Beale Scholarship for Outstanding Promise & Unusual Fitness, and earning a Master of Architecture with Honors in 2009.
Mazen has been practicing architecture in Boston for the past 15 years.