Congratulations to Omar Ferwati, who is the recipient of the Marj Schaefer Award and Barry Bell Scholarship. The Marj Schaefer Award celebrates contribution to the School of Architecture, while the Barry Bell Scholarship is awarded to an Architecture graduate student pursuing research in international architecture.
Omar
completed
his
MArch
at
Waterloo
in
2020.
As
a
student,
he
founded
the
Sustainability
Collective
at
the
School
of
Architecture
in
2019, an
open
group
of
students,
faculty,
and
staff
working
towards
changes
in
the
school,
community,
and
profession
in
response
to
the
climate
crisis.
In
their
first
year,
they
advocated
for
curricular
changes,
held
awareness
campaigns,
and
organized
community
action.
Omar
was
also
co-director
of
BRIDGE
and
co-curator
of
Common
Waters,
a
collective
exhibition
on
community
and
environment
in
2019.
Common
Waters
also
depended
on
the
joint
effort
of
tens
of
students
to
design,
build,
and
host
three-months
of
exhibition
and
events.
Omar’s
recent
thesis
and
current
research
asks
how
civilians
use
architecture
to
survive
urban
warfare.
It
introduces
'civilian
architectural
responses' as
a
phenomenon
where
people
cope
with
violence
by
creating
and
changing
the
urban
space
around
them.
He
is
contributing
a
chapter
on
this
work
for
a
forthcoming
book
on
reconstruction
and
violence.
Omar
now
works
as
a
researcher
with
Forensic
Architecture
in
London
where
he
uses
spatial
analysis
for
human
rights
investigations.
