Page Expands Expertise in Middle East-North Africa (MENA) Region

As a multidisciplinary design firm, Page has an extensive portfolio of international award-winning projects, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. These include the Kempinski Hotel in Accra, Ghana which was recently recognized as the 2017 Best Hotel in West Africa by Bafalon Awards in partnership with Africa Travel Quarterly. Building on this portfolio, Page is expanding our team in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region with a new office in Dubai, strengthening our architecture, engineering and consulting services in the region with more experts on the ground.

Leading the charge is Amro Alansari, AIA. Fluent in Arabic and English, Alansari unites an attuned cultural understanding with a detail-oriented project management style. With more than 25 years of experience, Alansari is a former Principal-In-Charge and Managing Leader of the MENA Region as well as head of the architecture department at Stantec. He also served as MENA Regional Director for Corgan. Alansari brings a wide range of international experience to Page including managing all aspects of large-scale residential, commercial, hospitality and mixed-use developments. Most recently, he has focused on the healthcare sector and business development in the United Arab Emirates and other MENA countries.

Under his leadership, Page will strengthen our existing team and its services in the region with respect to in-region senior management responsiveness to client needs. James Wright, FAIA, Page Senior Principal and current President of the AIA International Region, puts it this way: “Amro will do for Page’s international practice entities what the firm began almost four years ago with the restart of our 119-year old domestic practice: Our resources and services will be fully integrated regardless of geography.  Just as we have moved away from a traditional business model of highly independent U.S. offices, Amro will oversee our current and future resources in the MENA region and report directly to our Board of Directors. We see significant opportunities in this part of the world for several of our key design and consulting competencies.”

Page has consistently been ranked the number one firm practicing in Africa by the annual World Architecture 100, a survey sponsored by Building Design Magazine that showcases the largest 100 architecture firms in the world. Our expertise in MENA spans a variety of large, complex mission critical facilities for the United States Department of State, transformative urban developments for international housing and hospitality developers and significant design, planning and building efforts for institutional clients.

Recent projects include branding, graphics and wayfinding for Dubai’s Business Bay District, an 80 million-square-foot business, commercial and residential district located in the heart of the city, along its primary waterway. The Gold Coast City Kempinski Hotel in Accra, Ghana is located in a thriving local cultural scene and offers 269 rooms, including 22 luxury suites and two presidential suites. The hotel is so popular it has been referred to as the informal seat of government due to the many official functions now held there.

Our academic team has various projects in the region including a 380,000-gross-square-foot energy and research laboratory for King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Page is also providing programing and design services for three colleges, a faculty club and a prayer center, as well as associated campus infrastructure, for the 490-hectare (1,211-acre) Shadadiyah campus for Kuwait University in Kuwait City, Kuwait.

Senior Principal Mattia Flabiano, AIA, focuses on the opportunities to expand Page’s role in the healthcare industry with the new Dubai office. “We led the way for Qatar’s expansion of its healthcare services with a well implemented master plan encompassing eight existing hospital campuses and four new campuses,” notes Flabiano. “As this market sector grows, we expect to expand our more than 40 years of experience in the region which started with work for ARAMCO, SANG and the Bahrain Ministry of Health and now covers most of the countries in the MENA region. Our new Dubai office demonstrates our commitment to the region and our positive outlook on its economic growth.”

The firm is also committed to expanding its unparalleled heritage of public architecture, which includes more than 25 new U.S. diplomatic compounds around the globe. Page has delivered more than 17 embassy and consular compounds in the MENA region, in addition to a number of mission critical facilities for the U.S. Department of Defense. Our work includes four LEED Gold-Certified embassies in the region. Brazzaville, Congo was the first LEED Gold-certified embassy built in the African continent and the first built by U.S. Department of State Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations in the world; the two other facilities are in Morocco and Nigeria.

Page is proud of its work around the world in Asia, Latin America and other regions, both as prime architect and in collaboration with other firms. We continue to explore possibilities for future growth in all aspects from geography to value chain services.