Khaled Malas

PhD Candidate

Areas of interest: Islamic Art and Architecture. Buildings and their representations; design-as-research; histories and theories of art, architecture, urbanism, magic, and medicine. The production, circulation, and consumption of efficacious images.

Khaled Malas is an architect and art historian from Damascus. His research focuses on images and image-making technologies in producing and challenging the potential of places, real and imagined. His dissertation addresses a corpus of medieval magico-medicinal bowls bearing a depiction of the Kaaba.

He is the principal of Sigil, an art/design collective exploring the metamorphoses of Arab landscapes marked by historical and contemporary struggles. Sigil’s work has been widely exhibited, published, and commissioned (Milano Design Triennale, Venice Architecture Biennale, amongst others).

He has taught at Columbia University’s GSAPP in New York City and Amman. In Fall 2021, he is teaching “Medieval Mediterranean Technologies of ‘Magic’” at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.