Iraqi architect and author Rifat Chadirji poses for a portrait in his summer home in Halat, Lebanon, on March 29, 2008.
Paul Taggart / WPN Iraqi architect and author Rifat Chadirji poses for a portrait in his summer home in Halat, Lebanon, on March 29, 2008.

Architect and theoretician Rifat Chadirji, Hon. FAIA, renowned for his modernist contributions to Iraq and to architecture and throughout the Middle East, died at the age of 93 in his London home on April 10 after contracting COVID-19.

Born in Baghdad in 1926, Chadirji studied at the Hammersmith School of Arts and Crafts in London before returning to Iraq in 1952. There, Chadirji founded his architecture and engineering firm Iraq Consult, reshaping the fabric of Baghdad's built environment with buildings such as the Unknown Soldier Monument (1959), the platform of the Freedom Monument (1959) in Tahrir Square in Baghdad, and the Central Post Offices (1970). In addition to his design work, Chadirji also worked to document Baghdad’s social and built environment, taking 80,000 photographs of the city from the 1950s until the 1980s.

The demolition of Baghdad’s Haifa Street in 1981
Arab Image Foundation The demolition of Baghdad’s Haifa Street in 1981
Demolition in Baghdad (1981)
Arab Image Foundation Demolition in Baghdad (1981)

Chadirji's work was temporarily sidelined in 1978 when he was jailed for refusing to give Iraq's then-leader President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr permission to use his offices for intelligence purposes. Two years later, Chadirji was released by Al-Bakr’s successor, Saddam Hussein, to work on a Baghdad master plan. Following its completion, Chadirji received the Harvard Loeb fellowship and relocated to Cambridge, Mass., where he taught in the Harvard University department of philosophy.

In 1982 and 1987, respectively, Chadirji became an honorary fellow at the Royal Institute of British Architects and The American Institute of Architects. In 1986, he received the Chairman’s Award for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and in 2015 he received Iraq’s prestigious Tamayouz Architectural Lifetime Achievement Award.

Another decoration for Tammuz month
Arab Image Foundation Another decoration for Tammuz month

Since Chadirji's passing, the global community has mourned his loss on social media.