Alyaa Gamal

Alyaa Gamal is an architect and geometry and traditional woodwork instructor at the Jameel House of Traditional Arts in Cairo, Egypt. She is a 2021 graduate of the Jameel House diploma course where she specialised in woodwork, specifically traditional joinery woodwork techniques that are considered to be an endangered traditional craft. For her graduation project she created a wood panel and produced an Arabic-language guidebook explaining the steps involved in the traditional woodwork joinery technique—the only Arabic language document of its kind.

Alya holds an architecture degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Egypt and a fashion diploma from the October University for Modern Sciences and Arts. Prior to joining the Jameel House, she worked at Shakieb Company for French interior and exterior design as a junior architect and as a senior architect at Green Valley Investments.

After graduating from the Jameel House in Cairo, Alyaa began instructing students at the Jameel House in the design and production phases of traditional joinery projects. She has also led multiple traditional joinery workshops across Egypt and Saudi Arabia including at Bayt Yakan in Cairo, the Misk Art Institute in Riyadh and the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah.

She is currently working on creating physical and digital documentation of lost pieces of Cairo’s Islamic heritage.