Farouk Noormohamed - architect

For over 30 years, Farouk Noormohamed has used architecture to change lives, inspire the spirit, advance sustainability, and promote innovation. His buildings combine breathtaking design, efficiency of space, and harmony with nature. Many of the buildings Farouk has designed have become landmarks in their context, and are a source of pride for its users and owners, in the process garnering him international recognition for his contribution to culturally sustainable architecture. He has had the honour of working extensively with Mawlana Hazar Imam and his institutions on numerous projects in Canada, Africa, and Asia.

Farouk has done wide-ranging voluntary and pro-bono work, working with students and community organizations alike. He has served as the chairman of the Design Review Committee for the District of West Vancouver, Canada which reviews projects that are to be built in the District for their appropriateness. Within the Ismaili community he has designed over 20 Jamatkhanas, both across Canada and around the world. He has also served on the Ismaili Tariqah and Religious Education Board of Canada, as well as designing numerous stages and lounges for Mawlana Hazar Imam's visits to Canada.

Farouk is passionate about designing buildings that embrace innovation, sustainability, local conditions and vernacular to reflect the aspirations of their users. In Vancouver, Farouk’s creativity has inspired the adaptive reuse of tennis clubs and bus depots into Jamatkhanas, old houses into architectural landmarks, and crumbling heritage buildings into inspired, warm homes, in the process helping to save architectural history.

Farouk has earned a reputation for architectural creativity in the face of extremely challenging circumstances. Whether designing the landmark Ismaili Centre, Dushanbe and the Ismaili Jamatkhana and Centre in Khorog, both in Tajikistan, the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, the Aga Khan Academy in Mombasa, Kenya, or designing a “Net Zero” Agricultural Institute in the remote village Bilibiza in Mozambique, his architecture draws from the finest of local traditions, crafts, and building techniques combining these with the best of modern technology – he creates efficiencies and an unparalleled synthesis of the traditional and modern.

In 2013 Farouk was named a Fellow of the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada, conferred to Architects who have made an exceptional contribution to the field of Architecture.

Farouk studied architecture at the University of Nairobi, which had a professional exchange program with world-renowned institutions, and studied under professionals from the AA School of Architecture in London, the Royal Academy in Denmark, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. Farouk has done further studies at Harvard, MIT, the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto. He has lectured at numerous professional conferences and universities across North America and around the world.

He is winner of the AIBC’s Barbara Dalrymple Award for Community Service, the International Union of Architects’ Gold Medal, the International Design Silver Award, the German Design Award in 2020, and many other national and international awards and competitions.

See more of his work on his firm's website FNDesign.com