THANK YOU Rifat Chadirji.....

It seems I am never ready!

It seems that I want people to live forever.. but I definitely learned and especially with the loss of my father (died at 93 as well) that people in their physical form die but the memories they leave behind, their writings, their contribution whether to your life or the life of others stay alive and they do live on.. They do stay with us in a different form...

Rifat Chadirji.... an ICON in Iraq's Architecture and Iraq's culture...A great thinker with a brilliant mind left us at 93 years old..

I happened to grow up in a city full of his architecture..and it so happened that he is a family relative - from my mother's side..

For me personally and for Iraq's architecture and culture, he invited us through his journey..through his outlook.... through his writings and architecture to experience, think and critique...

My Masters Thesis at MIT - In the Shadow of Segregation: Women's identity in Modern Iraqi House studied the work of prominent Iraqi Architects and Rifat Chadirji was a key figure in my thesis! especially in the critique of colonial modern aesthetic preferences, the emergence of modern conflict, the new modern aesthetics and the difficulties Iraqi modernist architects faced working within the political and conventional rules of the society.

Rifat Chadirj believed in liberating himself and the society from the conventional style and he believed in a style that could comprehend new changes.

He was a critical part of Iraq's modern transformations in the fifties and sixties..

THANK YOU Rifat Chadirji for all you have offered us...

for your monumental and generous contributions to the world..

we are forever grateful..