Besim Hakim was born in Iraq in 1938 and attended the University of Liverpool, UK, where he gained a BArch in 1962. He then enrolled in the postgraduate course run by the Architectural Association’s (AA) Department of Tropical Studies, graduating in 1963. Two joint projects, with fellow students, for schools in Baghdad and Lagos were published in the AA Journal of April 1963. Following completion of the course he appears to have returned to Iraq and in 1965 is recorded as part of a consortium which included his fellow AA Tropical Studies alumni, Duraid Ali Yawir (1963-64) and established Bristol architects alumni, Norman Whicheloe and Stephen Macfarlane, which won the 1965 competition to redesign al-Tahrir Square, Baghdad. By 1967 he was living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, working as an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Nova Scotia (now Dalhousie University). Alongside this, he also found time to complete an M.Arch in urban design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1971. He has subsequently had an illustrious academic career, becoming a prominent, internationally recognized expert on vernacular settlements and the traditional rule systems and customary laws which have shaped the built environment in the cultures of the Mediterranean region. In 1990 he was awarded an Education Honors award by the AIA, in recognition of his teaching in North America, in North Africa and in the Middle East – he was a professor for 7 years at the College of Architecture and Planning, King Faisal University, Saudi Arabia (now Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University). In 2010 he was appointed part of a team of five experts tasked with reviewing the proposed curriculum for the MA degree course in Islamic Urban Planning and Architecture at Qatar University. Amongst his numerous publications are a number of seminal books, including his early work on Tunisia ‘Sidi Bou Sa'id, Tunisia: Structure and Form of a Mediterranean Village’ (1978), ‘Arabic-Islamic Cities: Building and Planning Principles (1986) and ‘Mediterranean Urbanism: Historic Urban/Building Rules and Processes’ (2014). His extensive archive was donated to the Aga Kahn Documentation Centre / MIT Libraries in 2017 and hold materials relating to his research in locations including Bahrain, Tunisia, Marrakech, Rabat and Fes.

Sources

• Architectural Association Council Minutes, 13th February, 1963. AA Archives
• ‘Besim Hakim Archive’, 1930–2015. AKDC-2017-0005. Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries. https://archivesspace.mit.edu/repositories/5/resources/1258
• Architectural Association Journal, 78, no. 871 (April 1963), pp.27, 312–13
• ‘Baghdad, Ancient City: New Face. Iraqi-British consortium plan to reconstruct Tahrir Square’, Bulletin of the Republic of Iraq, September / October 1965, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp.
• ‘Besim S. Hakim’, Archinet, Authorities. Accessed 10th July 2025: https://www.archnet.org/authorities/3390
• Caperna, A. ‘Interview with Besim Hakim: Mediterranean Codes and Sociogenerative Design’, International Society for Biourbanism website, accessed 10th July, 2025: https://www.biourbanism.org/interview-besim-hakim/