Omer Mohamed Ahmed Salim was born in Sudan in 1934 and attended Wadi Seidna Secondary School, in Khartoum State, before graduating from the Department of Architecture at the University of Khartoum c1962. In September 1962 he is recorded as a student enrolled on the postgraduate course run by the Architectural Association’s (AA) Department of Tropical Studies, in London. One of his early projects (designed jointly with fellow students), for a school in Delhi, was published in the AA Journal of April 1963. In the same year, Omer was to marry Marie-Louise Wallin in Liverpool (subsequently the Swedish Vice-Consul in Sudan in the 1970s). He appears to have then returned to Sudan, teaching in the Architecture Department of the University of Khartoum. Alongside this, he had his own practice, Omer Salim Architecst and was to become a co-founder of the major Sudanese architectural practice, Tekno Consultancy, together with Mohammed Hassan Ayoub. The Canadian Centre for Architecture has digitised and made available a number of drawings from projects designed by Salim, in conjunction with Ayoub and Abdel Moneim Mustafa, including documentation of the College of Fine and Applied Art, Khartoum Polytechnic Complex (unbuilt) and for the Omdurman University Campus – both from 1978. In the same year Salim also completed his PhD at the University of Liverpool and was appointed Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Khartoum. Two years later he assumed the position of Dean of the School of Architecture at the Sharg El-Neil College, Khartoum.
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