Dr. Mona El Khafif is an associate professor of Architecture and urban design and project coordinator of the new CCA URBANlab. She holds a professional architecture degree from the RWTH in Aachen, Germany, and a doctorate in urban design from the TU in Vienna. Dr. El Khafif worked in architectural offices in Cologne before settling in Vienna in 1997, where she was involved in several important Viennese design projects, such as the BUSarchitecure pilot Homeworkers project that received the Otto Wagner Urban Development Prize in 1998; and the Ortner & Ortner Museumsquartier Vienna, one of the world´s 10-largest cultural urban districts.

In 2001 Dr. 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. She has extensive experience in the organization and direction of international urban workshops and in developing collaborative cooperation programs with universities in such countries as Germany, Turkey, Iran, and the United States.

After teaching in the core studios for the urban design program at the Institute of Urban Design/TU Vienna from 2000–06, Dr. El Khafif joined the URBANbuild program at Tulane University in New Orleans in 2006 to support studios at the urban and architectural scales in the aftermath or Hurricane Katrina. She also coauthored URBANbuild: Local/Global. Her current research operates at multiple scales, examining the interdisciplinary aspects of European urban renewal strategies. At CCA Dr. El Khafif leads the urban design curriculum and teaches urban research seminars, large-scale urban and architectural design studios, and international programs.

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Associate Professor, Architecture

Dipl. Ing., RWTH Aachen University, Germany; PhD, TU Vienna, Austria

Contact: melkhafif@cca.edu