About Kinetic Design Bureau
I am Haitham Wanas, architect, founder of Kinetic Design Bureau (Cairo, 2013). What follows is the short version of how the practice came to be where it is in 2026, and what it is for.
Cairo training
I graduated from Ain Shams University in Cairo in 1996 with a degree in Architectural Engineering. One of my teachers there was Dr. Ahmed Mito (1966-2015). Mito taught a way of approaching architecture in which form was never the starting point. The starting point was a question about the brief, about the site, about the user's body in the space. From that question, the form had to emerge, named and traceable. He called it concept-first, emergent, computational; I now hear it more simply as analytical, in the sense that the work has to show its working. That training is the foundation Kinetic Design Bureau was built on in 2013, and it remains the foundation it returns to in 2026.
Working architect, 1998-2013
Between 1998 and 2013 I worked as a practising architect across the Gulf and Egypt. The longest tenure was nine years at Mohamed Al-Sheikh Mubarak Architecture and Engineering Consultants in Dubai, which formed me as a working professional through commercial and residential briefs, and through the early move from AutoCAD to Building Information Modelling. From there I moved through senior roles at Obayashi Corporation on the Palm Jumeirah Monorail civil joint venture, then at Qasba Engineering Consultancy, then at Diar Consultants as senior architect on the Victory Heights residential development in Dubai Sports City. In 2010 I returned to Cairo as principal architect at ECG (Engineering Consultants Group), working on regional commercial and residential developments. By 2013 I had fifteen years of practice behind me and was ready to start something on my own terms.
Kinetic Design Bureau, 2013-2018
I founded Kinetic Design Bureau in Cairo in 2013, initially under the trading name Kinetic Engineering Consultant. The studio worked as a concept-design practice on commissioned work in Dubai: a residential high-rise on the Burj Khalifa axis, an administration building for Skydive Dubai on the Al Sufouh waterfront, a driving school campus in Dubai South, and a competition entry for the Iconic Mosque at Dubai Creek Harbour. Most of the engagements came through PDC Consult; the mosque was a joint design venture with PDC. The four projects shown in the portfolio are the work I think still earns its place. They are concept-only, none built; what they share is the methodology, not the typology.
Maarif, 2014-present
In 2014 I relocated to Riyadh and joined Maarif for Education and Training Holding, one of the largest private education operators in Saudi Arabia, where I have served as Design Director ever since. The role is institutional. I work on the client side of school projects, briefing consultants, reviewing design submissions, and holding the architectural standard across a portfolio of K-12 campuses being delivered for the company. Twelve years inside that work changes how a designer thinks. Programme stops being a constraint on architecture and becomes what architecture is for. Reviewing other architects' work clarifies one's own. And the scale at which decisions actually matter in education becomes legible: the metre-by-metre decisions in a classroom layout, the through-line a child walks every day for thirteen years.
Relaunch, 2026
Kinetic Design Bureau reactivates in 2026 as my general practice, Cairo-based, taking commissioned concept work across typologies in the same methodological register the four portfolio projects were made in.
Trained in Cairo, tested in Dubai, deepened in Riyadh, returning to commissioned practice in 2026 with the same operating system it was built on.