User:Anjani Chauhan/sandbox

Yahya Jan,  born 04 April 1963, is an internationally recognized architect living in Dubai. Jan undertook his undergraduate and graduate studies at Princeton University in the US. A licensed architect in New York, Jan worked for 8 years in New York and Boston before moving to Dubai in 1996.

Over the past 34 years, Jan’s design work has gained recognition for its inventiveness and elegance. A winner of numerous international awards, Yahya’s design and research is featured at conferences and in publications worldwide.

Jan’s most recent design work in the region includes Ciel Tower in Dubai (2018-2023), currently under construction and slated to be the tallest hotel in the world on completion. Jan’s built work includes typologies such as offices, residential and hotel towers, retail malls, and multi-use developments.

Jan believes in the ability of integrated design to positively transform our built environment. Central to his design philosophy is a multi-disciplinary approach that combines art, technology, and the environment. Jan’s design approach is inclusive, bringing together many players, including owners, architects, structural and environmental engineers, landscape designers, cost analysts and others.

His design method is exploratory, comprising of loose hand sketches, physical models, computer-generated drawings and models. Jan believes in working collaboratively with others to unlock hidden potential. His process combines a mathematical analysis of the brief with an understanding of site and environmental possibilities.

Jan is President & Design Director of NORR Group Consultants International Limited, a global architecture and engineering design firm behind some of the iconic buildings in Dubai and the region. From Dubai, he leads the group’s continued growth in the Middle East and Asia.

Early Life and Education
Born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan. From an early age, Jan showed an interest in both the sciences and the arts, constructing miniatures in balsa wood in a makeshift workshop at home and experimenting, unsuccessfully, with building an electric motor.

Jan completed his high school education in Karachi, graduating as a valedictorian in his class at Karachi Grammar School. In 1982, Jan won a scholarship to study mathematics at Princeton University. During his undergraduate years, Jan’s continued interest in both the sciences and the arts pulled him from the theoretical world of mathematics and physics to the applied world of engineering and architecture. During his studies, Jan undertook finite element structural analysis of historical buildings, including a study of seismic-induced deformation of the domes at the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Subsequently, he extended this study with independent research on the distinctive dome structures of Ottoman mosques in Anatolia. In 1986, Jan graduated from Princeton with honors, with a degree in structural engineering and a diploma from the joint Architecture and Engineering program.

In 1987, Jan’s undergraduate design thesis for an Islamic community center in New York City, was selected a winner of the King Fahd Award in Islamic Architecture, an international ideas competition “to recognize and promote studies that enhance, rebuild and encourage the art of Islamic architecture.” "I thought a community center was needed here, so I made up my own program," says Jan, a Pakistani who has studied Islamic architecture as a hobby, as Princeton has no specialized program. "I also thought it would be more challenging to do a project designed for a specific area, and that corner was empty at the time." Upon graduation, Jan continued his studies at Princeton, graduating in 1989 with a Master of Architecture degree from the School of Architecture. Jan’s graduating design thesis proposed an open-ended strategy for the modernization and development of a squatter settlement in Karachi.

Early Career: USA, 1989-1996
During and after completing his studies, Jan worked for eight years in the US, in New York and Boston.

Notable projects undertaken by Jan during this period include: