Kerem Cengiz, Managing Director, LWK + PARTNERS, Middle East

Cengiz plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of urbanism across the region. With over 25 years of experience spanning Europe, Asia, and the GCC, he brings a refined, context-driven approach to architecture, master planning, and placemaking. His work focuses on aligning commercial objectives with cultural depth and spatial intelligence to create environments that are not only functional, but enduring and meaningful. Rather than approaching projects solely through design, Cengiz operates at the intersection of strategy, stakeholder alignment, and urban foresight. He translates complex ambitions whether from investors, civic leaders, or developers into frameworks that empower creative teams to deliver lasting impact. His leadership style is collaborative and systems-oriented, fostering multidisciplinary teams that integrate architecture, interior design, landscape, and urban strategy into a cohesive ecosystem. “I don’t think it was one single, dramatic moment,” says Cengiz when asked about his tipping point. “It was more a gradual realisation that I was already reading the world architecturally; through streets, thresholds, movement, light, memory and the way people occupy space. Coming from a multi-cultural background, I have always been interested in the “in-between”: between cultures, disciplines, scales, the imagined and the real. Architecture became the place where those tensions could be made productive,” he shares.

“The tipping point was understanding that architecture is not simply about buildings. It is a way of translating human aspiration, culture, economics, climate, technology and responsibility into environments that can genuinely improve daily life. Once I understood that, the discipline became impossible to switch off. It gave me a language wide enough for curiosity and serious enough for consequence: a way to turn ideas into places, and places into meaningful human experience.” The firm is currently pursuing projects in Phase 1 Sultan Haitham City and a development called Nine Collective.