Mona El Khafif

Mona El Khafif is an Associate Professor at Waterloo University School of Architecture. She holds a professional architecture degree from the RWTH in Aachen, Germany, and a doctorate in urban design from the Vienna University of Technology.

Dr. El Khafif worked in architectural offices in Cologne before settling in Vienna in 1997, where she worked on design projects including the BUSarchitecture pilot Homeworkers project and the Ortner & Ortner Museumsquartier Vienna. In 2001, El Khafif founded the interdisciplinary architectural design studio phase 1 Fox_El Khafif_Nuhsbaumer. She also is a founding member of IG architecture, a platform for the development of contemporary architecture in Vienna, and has extensive experience in organizing international urban workshops and collaborative cooperation programs with international universities.

After teaching at the TU Vienna from 2000–06, El Khafif joined the URBANbuild program at Tulane University in New Orleans to support studios at the urban and architectural scales in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She is the co-author of URBANbuild: Local/Global and author of Staged Urbanism: Urban Spaces for Art, Culture and Consumption in the Age of Leisure Society. Her current research operates at multiple scales, examining the interdisciplinary aspects of urban regeneration strategies and urban ecologies.