Jalal is the Design principle and the owner of Cipher Architects. Currently he overlooks the design process and the quality of all the company’s projects. Keeping an eye on efficiency, computational design and parametrics are key to most of the production and all the projects are designed, engineered and produced using BIM.

Background

Being a juggler is how I define what I do. After Graduating from the Architectural Association in London, my academic adviser advised me to work for engineering consultancy, as he believed
that real architects are those who have a rounded vision of the building industry. That was the reason that I joined Buro Happold straight after my graduation, being an architect in an engineering office was a challenge itself, so I had to learn and assist almost in all various disciplines, this was by refining their problems and help them resolve it. Very soon, I initiated a group within Buro Happold, named “Generative Geometry” which deals in optimizing, refining and simplifying complex geometries into engineered forms. After 7 years after, I made the decision to get back to architecture, but I chose the most challenging, “Zaha Hadid”, that gave me a totally different perspective to design, and mainly on the way to convince clients that un-compromised design quality will pay him back.

Zaha’s experience was great, though was a bit slow, and I decided to go to Dubai, as i have seen the construction pace is on full speed.  Dubai was my first departure, where I spent 2.5 years working on the W hotel at Palm Jumirah with RMJM, where I managed to create a special relationship with the owner. Whom later commissioned me to design his Dubai and Moroccan Villas. RMJM has some serious financial crisis at the time, which forced me to move on to Kuwait, where i joined SSH, as a design principle responsible of mainly managing the “Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Cultural Centre” , a project which was technically an resolved at the time. After the project was handed to the contractor, I felt that i can serve the contractor better in utilizing computational design and parametric in the fabrication. That was when “Cipher” was officially created, we setup a company in partnership with “Sign Design”, were we designed more than 36 projects scaling from interior to fully developed master-planning schemes.