Architects Wael Al Awar and Kenichi Teramoto, principals of Dubai-based ibda design, have an unusual way of communicating. Their ability to express themselves in English, their mutual language, sometimes fails them, so they resort to sketches and diagrams. Says Al Awar, “Through the drawings, the ideas become self-explanatory.”
Al Awar, 40, who is Lebanese, and Teramoto, 43, who is Japanese, met in Tokyo in 2004, when both were working for C+A, a small firm known for residential and educational projects. They landed there after Al Awar had worked in Barcelona and Teramoto in the Netherlands. Over the next seven years, as they jointly managed C+A’s projects throughout Asia and the Middle East, “our design philosophy grew closer and closer together,” Al Awar explains. So it felt natural when, after Al Awar decided to found ibda (Arabic for “start”), he asked Teramoto to join him. Teramoto didn’t hesitate: “I didn’t have any doubts,” he says.
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