Saudi Arabia: Azzah Aldeghather

Azzah Aldeghather is the first licensed woman architect and consultant in Saudi Arabia, and founder and principal architect at Mimaria Architectural Consultants in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (1988–). She holds a bachelor’s of architecture from Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York (1982–1987), a sustainable cities certificate from Harvard Extension School, and certificates in Future Cities, Cities and Sustainable Development, and Religious Literacy: Tradition and Scriptures from the Harvard Edx Series. She also trained in compressed earth block and rammed earth design and construction, and in the use of both automatic and semi-automatic compressed earth block machines.

Aldeghather was appointed by the Minister of Culture as a founding member of the Saudi Alomran Association; she is also a member of the Saudi Council of Engineers as an architectural consultant, and served as an advisor on the board of directors for both the Architecture Department of Prince Sultan University and the Architecture and Design Department of Dar Al Uloom University, both located in Riyadh.

Aldeghather earned an invitation to participate as a nominator for the Aga Khan Award. Additionally, Aldeghather has been invited to present at numerous conferences, webinars, and lecture series. In Riyadh, these have included Cityscape Global event (as keynote speaker, November 2025), the 8th Furniture Landscape and Play Spaces Summit (October 2025), the Saudi Umran Association Lecture series (August 2024), the AIA Middle East Regional Conference (December 2023), and the Cityscape Global Conference (September 2023).  She earned a citation at the Aga Khan Islamic Architecture Awards, and the third prize at both the National Competition for King Abdulaziz Centre for the Gifted and an international competition for a Global Startup Hub hosted in Busan, South Korea.