The Jordanian architect and painter Sahel Alhiyari has won the Jury Prize of the Institut du monde arabe’s 2026 Prix du design. The laureates were announced at a ceremony in Paris on 9 September 2026, and Alhiyari, who is based in Amman, was named alongside the Grand Prix winner Salima Naji and four other prizewinners.
None of the three reports that name his prize cite a specific project. Marie Claire Arabia instead presents it through the whole of his career: his year with Álvaro Siza on the Rolex Mentor and Protégé programme, his teaching at Harvard and Venice, and his seat on the jury of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. It is a recognition of a body of work, and of a way of building that has stayed consistent through changes in fashion.
Other 2026 laureates were Aseel Alamoudi (Emerging Talent), Altin Studio (Contemporary Craftsmanship), Christopher Ghoussoub of Foukhar Studio (Impact Prize) and Areen Hassan (Public Prize), according to Marie Claire Arabia and the Qatar News Agency.
Training between three cities
Alhiyari founded and leads the Office of Sahel Alhiyari for Architecture in Amman. His education took him across the Atlantic and to Italy. He holds bachelor’s degrees in architecture and in fine arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and postgraduate training at the school of architecture of the University of Venice.
The pairing of architecture and fine art at RISD is worth noting, because Alhiyari has continued to paint. His paintings have been shown in Jordan, Lebanon and Italy. The sources do not give his date of birth.
A year with Siza
In the early 2000s Alhiyari was chosen as the first architect to take part in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, in which an established master works for a year with a younger artist. His mentor was the Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza. Design Doha dates the selection to 2002 and Architecture Lab to 2003, and the mentorship cycle ran across both years.
The programme matters because of what it says about his standing so early in his career. It also fits his later work. Siza’s buildings are known for their calm handling of material and light, and Alhiyari’s own houses in Amman are likewise built around the character of one material.
Hand-cut limestone
That material is limestone. In an interview published on 2 September 2024 by Architecture Lab, Alhiyari said that in West Amman local limestone is the standard construction material. His point was that the choice of stone is not unusual in the city; what matters is how it is worked.
Speaking about the B. Kanaan Residence in the Abdoun district, he explained that the decision to use hand-chiselled stone was an effort to revive a traditional craft. For several decades much stone cladding in Amman has been machine-cut, which gives a flat, even face. Hand-chiselling leaves the surface with the marks of the tool, so that each wall looks different in changing light.
Another house he has built is the K. Barghouti House. Asked about method, Alhiyari said there is no typical process and that each project dictates its approach. It is a modest statement, but it explains why his buildings do not follow a single formula.
Teaching, juries and exhibitions
Alongside his practice, Alhiyari has taught. He was at the University of Venice from 1993 to 1995, and ran Arch Lab design studios with CSBE and the Aga Khan Award in 2002 and 2004. He led an option studio at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the autumn of 2010 and a vertical studio at the American University of Beirut in the autumn of 2011. He has also lectured at Columbia, ETH Zurich and AUB, among other institutions.
He is a reviewer and a member of the Master Jury of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, one of the most closely watched prizes in the field. His work was shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021, in Arab Design Now 2024 at Qatar Museums, at the Khalid Shoman Foundation in Amman and at the Center for Architecture in New York.
Honours at home
In 2024 he received the Great Arab Minds Award in Architecture and Design, and in 2025 the King Abdullah II Order for Distinction, second degree. The Paris prize therefore completes a run of recognition that began at home and has gradually moved outward.
The regional view
For Gulf readers, Alhiyari’s story has two points of contact. The first is Qatar, where Qatar Museums showed his work in Arab Design Now 2024 and where Design Doha lists him in its directory. The second is a shared building tradition. Limestone in Amman and coral stone along the Gulf coast belong to different geologies, but both are local materials that builders have long cut and set by hand, and both raise the same question of how far a new building should honour old technique.
His honour in Paris also sits beside the others on the 2026 list. Moroccan earth architecture, Saudi furniture shaped by AlUla’s rock and Jordanian limestone houses were all recognised in the same evening, which offers a useful snapshot of where design from the Arab world is looking: back to local material, forward to contemporary form.
What the prize means
It is worth being precise about what the Jury Prize does and does not say. The coverage does not name a project, so it is not possible to point to a single building and call it the winner. What it does show is that the jurors saw a pattern in Alhiyari’s work, and chose to honour it as a whole.
For an architect with a long record of teaching, juries and quietly built houses, that is probably the right shape of prize. In a city where stone is the standard material, he has made the choice of how it is cut into the point of the building. The Institut du monde arabe has now put that choice on the record.
Sources: Marie Claire Arabia, Qatar News Agency, Time Out Paris, Design Doha, Architecture Lab