Born in Iraq, Matti Barsoom Hanna received his architectural education in the UK, first attending Norwood Technical College (now part of the South Bank Colleges) in London around 1962. He later joined the Architectural Association (AA) for fifth year studies, entering the Department of Development and Tropical Studies for the 1968–69 academic year and producing a housing project in Baghdad for his final thesis (photographs of which survive in the AA Archives). Following graduation from the AA, Hanna’s return to Iraq fortuitously coincided with the country’s oil-boom era of the 1970s, which fuelled ambitious modernisation and housing programs that would come to define the careers of a generation of local architects (including another AA-trained Iraqi architect of his cohort, Said Majeed Al-Timimi). Hannah joined the Ministry of Housing in Baghdad around 1971, working in design consultancy and building research that explored modern construction methods for affordable housing. In 1976 at a symposium of the Building Research Centre in Baghdad, which operated under Iraq’s Scientific Research Foundation, Hanna presented a technical paper titled “Construction of Low-Income Housing Projects in a Prefabricated Modular Method”, which argued for the adoption of industrialised prefabrication methods to cut construction costs and time while establishing standardised components suitable for Baghdad’s climate. The paper has been widely cited alongside other notable Iraqi architects such as Rifat Chadirji and Basil Badran, and reflects a key era of housing initiatives in 1970s Iraq when industrialised construction was mobilised to address rapid urban growth. By the early 1980s, Hanna had risen to a senior position in Iraq’s state design consultancy apparatus, with a 1982 government order naming him Chief Engineer within the disciplinary committee of the National Center for Engineering and Architectural Consultancy in Baghdad. Established in 1972, this Center was part of the Ministry of Housing and Construction and functioned as a state-run architectural design bureau, with its team (including its noted architects Henry Svoboda and Ma’n Sarsem) being responsible for designing major government buildings like the new high-rises for the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Local Government in Baghdad, completed around 1982. Hanna, as a Chief Engineer at the Center, would likely have been involved in overseeing such projects, although individual authorship was often not publicly credited in these collective state works. Indeed, it should be noted that because much of Hanna’s work was within collective state programmes his individual profile has remained discreet. The massive housing developments of the late 1970s on which Hanna worked came under the authorship of government institutions and often foreign experts, without listing local architects by name. Thus, while Hanna undoubtedly contributed to Iraq’s modern architectural landscape, especially in the realm of housing and building technology, the documentation of his personal oeuvre is scarce and invites further attention.
Sources:
- Architectural Association Student Register 1945–1972. AA Archives.
- Alomairi, Mufeed Ehsan Shok, Oday Abbas Aboud, and Hadeel Mowaffaq Mahmood. “Pre-manufacturing Techniques and Their Role in Achieving Residential Efficiency.” Iraqi Journal of Architecture and Planning. Published November 25, 2019. Accessed June 12, 2025. https://iqjap.alkafeel.info/index.php/iqjap/article/view/493?utm_source=chatgpt.com
- Dorar al-Iraq (Iraqi Laws Database). “تشكيل لجنة انضباط موظفي المركز القومي للاستشارات الهندسية والمعمارية [Formation of the Disciplinary Committee for Employees of the National Center for Engineering and Architectural Consultancy].” Dorar al-Iraq Wiki: Iraqi Laws. Updated August 18, 2010. Accessed May 5, 2025. https://wiki.dorar-aliraq.net/iraqilaws/law/20518.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com
- Subhi Al-Azzawi to Edward Bottoms, email of August 27, 2024 (notes Hanna went “straight to fifth year” and worked at Iraq’s Ministry of Housing).
