Dr Khaled Azzam
Director, The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, UK
Dr Khaled Omar Azzam is the Director of The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London. He is an architect by training. He has built private residences, schools, mosques, offices, commercial buildings, and royal residences. In his design and architecture, he applies the elements of traditional Islamic design principles and construction techniques acquired from academic research and practice with the aim of establishing a contemporary expression for the architecture of the Arab/Islamic world.
Dr Azzam has applied the same principles for the construction of edifices to the development of education projects, programs and institutions. With his team at The Prince’s School he leads the development of curricula and courses that restore the relevance and meaning of the traditional arts in the contemporary setting.
In 1999, he became the Director of The Visual Islamic and Traditional Arts Program at The Prince’s Foundation in London focusing on the postgraduate MA and PhD programs. He also aimed to enlarge those programs’ coverage through outreach projects with schools and communities in the UK; with cultural and educational institutions such as the National College of Arts in Lahore; The Arab Academy in Cairo; and establishing the College of Traditional Islamic Arts at the Al Balqah University in Amman, Jordan.
In 2003, through the initiative of HRH The Prince of Wales, Dr Azzam facilitated the enlargement of the VITA Program through a comprehensive understanding of universal principles and values shared by diverse and traditional cultures and faith traditions. Dr. Azzam has also integrated The School’s education program with the need for awakening the social, spiritual and economic lifeline of communities through a vibrant Outreach Education Program that reaches marginalized communities from Rose Town, Jamaica and Kano, Nigeria to learning communities in cosmopolitan Abu Dhabi and Beijing, China.
In 2009, Her Majesty the Queen awarded Dr Azzam the title of Lieutenant of the Victoria Order. In 2010, he was privileged to address His Holiness Pope Benedict VI as a Muslim at a gathering of London’s Faith communities, citing the universal values that humanity has inherited and can draw from.
