6. Project Leadership – In a Fractured World
one that spanned continents, crossed time zones, and unfolded in desert cities still being written.
It was no longer just about detail, but about direction.
I wasn’t just designing façades; I was orchestrating futures.
Our projects were vast in scale and vision:
A luxury island resort off the coast of Jeddah.
A palace-turned-retreat in the heart of Dubai.
Masterplans where streets and skylines hadn’t yet been born.
I designed for royalty, collaborated with planners, engineers, lighting consultants—
and sometimes found myself mediating unspoken politics more than spatial arguments.
Architecture here was not linear.
It was layered—strategic, ceremonial, and often fragile beneath the surface.
I was growing into another kind of role:
The calm in the storm.
The one who sees the whole board, not just the move.
There were tensions, of course.
Internal dynamics. Competing visions.
The pressure of deadlines clashing with the weight of cultural nuance.
And still, we built.
I led teams through shifting requirements, restructured workflows,
introduced clarity where there was confusion.
In one recent project, I proposed a radical shift on working sequencing— and it worked.
Efficiency improved. Alignment returned.
Not everyone agreed at first, but leadership isn’t always consensus—it’s responsibility.
And I began to understand something:
That the future of architecture isn’t just about parametric curves or environmental metrics.
It’s about how we hold complexity—gracefully.
In Woods Bagot, I found both constraints and possibilities.
I learned how to lead not just in design, but in strategy.
How to ask: not just what can we build,
but who are we building for, and what world will they inherit?
There were moments of fatigue.
But there were also flashes of poetry:
A well-argued design option, a resolved masterplan,
a client’s nod that said, “Yes, that’s what we meant.”
And slowly, I realised:
That leadership is not about being the loudest voice.
It’s about being the one who listens, then speaks.
The one who holds the line when no one else does.
The one who still sees the bird, even in the fractured forest.
I wasn’t lost in the house of mirrors anymore.
I had found a clearing.