BIAS-AME emerged from a significant partnership between Megawra, 10 Tooba, and Mansour for Architecture and Conservation formed Tahayyuz Alliance – supported then by the All Around Culture program from Culture Resource – to think and question pedagogical approaches to the built environment as an interdisciplinary field.
This coalition stemmed from an immediate need for a conversation that encompasses all fields and disciplines shaping the built environment as a cultural landscape in need of equitable, non-extractive methods of engagement. Throughout 2021-2023, the three entities, joined by Salma Belal, embarked on designing an alternative pedagogical program that reflects their own community-based practices and the accumulated knowledge they have developed whether separately or together. A program of research, co-design, public events, and experimentation, concretised in the Built-Environment Institute for Applied-Studies - Africa and the Middle East (BIAS-AME).