Sandy Sabsabi

Part-time Instructor

Holding her Masters in Urban Design from the American University of Beirut, and her Bachelor degree from the Lebanese American University (2012), Sandy El Sabsabi is an urban designer and architect supporting innovative city design strategies and new thinking approaches that employs and recreates local urban potentials and qualities.

With 10 years of experience, she has managed, designed and executed social/luxurious housing complexes, commercial developments and urban design projects based in Lebanon and UAE. She is founder of UD+A studio for urban design and architecture in 2016.

Her interest in Urbanism, Ecology and Sustainability resulted in her enrollment in many public lectures, like “City Debates” platform, and participation in national and international competitions and workshops based in Lebanon and the Gulf area; stating mainly the “DPU Summer Lab” at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit in UCL, London, ”Beddawi at the Edge of a City” with UNDP, UNRWA and GIZ, and a winning competition of “Revisiting Dalieh” in Beirut issued by “The Civil Campaign to Protect The Dalieh of Raouche” in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment.

On the level of research and teaching, her experience started during her graduate training; she has served as a teaching assistant and occasionally a substitute lecturer for descriptive courses at the American University of Beirut in 2014, with Gregoire Sérof. Since then, she is giving urbanism, landscape architecture, descriptive and urban design studio courses in several universities in Lebanon. In parallel, she is working as a consultant urban designer and project manager on masterplan design proposals in the Gulf and Mediterranean contexts. She is also preparing her PhD research paper discussing Cultural Landscape Ecology and Urban Morphology in Mediterranean Suburbs.