I belong to an ethnic minority in Iraq called "Turkumani". Since 1923, this ethnic group has lacked the right to teach its own language in Iraq.
I visited Northern Iraq in 2003 in order to establish academic relations between the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University and north Iraqi universities. During this visit, I was asked to help create a design of the first Turkumani University for the city of Kirkuk. This university would be the first Iraqi university to offer courses in the native Turkish language of the Turkumani people, and the design was to be used for fund-raising purposes, and hopefully later for construction.
The following slide presentation is the work of three students from the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University: Kristen Brown, Heather Luedecke and Nicholas Unich. It was created under my guidance as Asst. Professor during a course in Community Design. The presentation contains historical and geographic information, weather patterns, sources of inspiration, and many other research elements that affected the design (2006.)
— Fuzuli University Presentation (PowerPoint 18 MB)
— Design by Play: A Process of Developing Form and Space Using Play