Themed ‘Pardon Our Progress’, Night School 2026 took its cue from the ever-present roadside signs that urge patience while the city takes new shape around us. If the present moment is a work in progress, then the future, forever out of reach, dangles the potentiality of completion.

The seminar participants met with seven experts and thinkers who foster yearslong commitment to their investigations into cities and how we inhabit them. As alive as they are, their projects are slow burns, with a constant openness to renewal in purpose and meaning. Even if the enduring project can never be entirely resolved, that hasn’t discouraged any of them from pursuits through streets and hallways, into the historical record, and with their trustworthy companions.

Night School, in past seasons, examined how histories get made; how our physical surroundings reveal more than they might at first appear to and how today’s lived experiences comprise lineages that stretch as far into the past as into the future. In this fifth season—a moment for Night School to take stock of its own present and future—Pardon Our Progress asked what fuels the investigation, even when the pieces can never really ‘add up’.

Night School 2026 guests included: historian Frauke Heard-Bey, food guide Arva Ahmed, architect Rashad Bukhash, urbanist Prasad Shetty and architect Rupali Gupte, architect Khaled Adham and architect Rem Koolhaas. Film curator Hind Mezaina returned to facilitate a film screening event responding to the themes.

Night School 2025 hosted seven events that were open to the general public, to collectively engage and reflect on the programme themes.

January 11, 2026 | An Unwritten Country: Frauke Heard-Bey in conversation with Meitha Al Mazrooei
Frauke Heard-Bey joins scholar Meitha Almazrooei to discuss the long arc of writing and archiving history. What started as a presentation at a European conference turned into Heard-Bey’s landmark publication From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates in 1982. As steadfast and concrete as her contributions to the historical record are, the conversation asked, “For whom do we write these histories?”, about attending to the past in the present moment.

January 14, 2026 | Off the Menu in Dubai: Public Lecture by Arva S. Ahmed
Arva Ahmed reflected on her unconventional path toward building a Dubai-based business around less-marketed aspects of UAE cities. Through Frying Pan Adventures, one of the city’s most respected food guides, Ahmed turned our attention to the bakeries, neighbourhood restaurants, and food vendors that keep residents fed. Beyond being life-sustaining, food delivers the scents and flavours that hold entire worlds and histories. Food, Ahmed reminds us, brings us into contact with the people who keep a city moving.

January 18, 2026 | Memory under Construction: Rashad Bukhash in conversation with Lina Najem
In conversation with researcher Lina Najem, H.E. Rashad Bukhash revisited decades of work on both shores of Dubai Creek, including his long tenure at Dubai Municipality. Rashad Bukhash unknowingly began his career in heritage preservation at 11 years old. In the streets of Old Dubai, he met architect Peter Jackson and helped him record measurements of the city’s oldest homes. Since then, Bukhash has restored and protected from demolition hundreds of buildings in Dubai and the UAE. During this lifelong pursuit, local and global approaches to architectural preservation have changed; this evening offered the chance to look back on what has been learned along the way.

January 24, 2026 | Constant Adjustment: Film Screening curated by Hind Mezaina
This year’s five short films explore how neighbourhoods and other places endure over time through ways of the property markets, political erasure, and the whim of human interest. The screening was followed by a discussion between Hind Mezaina and Todd Reisz, with audience participation. The following films were screened:

Wunderland Kalkar (Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoin, 2024, 5 min.)
Al Basateen / The Orchards (Antoine Chapon, 2025, 25 min.)
Okay Keskidee! Let Me See Inside (Rhea Storr, 2025, 19 min.)
The Architect of Luxor (Jocelyn Saab, 1986, 18 min.)
Bad for a Moment (Daniel Soares, 2025, 15 min.)

January 25, 2026 | School is a City: Public Lecture by Prasad Shetty and Rupali Gupte
In 2014, Rupali Gupte and Prasad Shetty co-founded the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA) with six friends in Mumbai. Today, a community of about 200 students and 30 faculty members sustain the institution. A fully accredited architecture school, SEA stakes its reputation on cultivating a critical, and playfully experimental, environment for questioning the architectural profession and its approach to cities. In this public talk, Gupte and Shetty reflected on the motivations and challenges that shaped their commitment to such an all-consuming project. Their account hints at one of the clearest ways architects contribute to a city: by engaging those who will soon be designing it.

January 28, 2026 | Biographies of a Cairo Neighbourhood: Public Lecture by Khaled Adham
Khaled Adham traced the personal and familial impulses that have shaped Cairo’s Mohandiseen district. In the 1940s, Mohandiseen was a subdivision for an aspiring class of homeowners and professionals. Today, in its ever-higher, ever-denser buildings, Adham finds stories that reveal how an Egyptian middle class strives to maintain its footing. These narratives take place as much in the streets of Cairo as in the cities of the Gulf; it is the family histories of everyday Cairenes that condense all these cities into the teeming streets of Mohandiseen.

January 31, 2026 | Architecture after The Gulf: Rem Koolhaas in conversation with Tala Gharagozlou
Rem Koolhaas was joined architect Tala Gharaglozlou for a conversation on his two decades of examining, questioning and working within Dubai and Gulf cities: how the region has shaped his approaches to architecture, how it has influenced the global practice more broadly and what ongoing work at OMA continues to emerge from these engagements.

—

Frauke Heard-Bey studied history and political science in Heidelberg and Berlin. She received her Ph.D. from the Freie Universität of West Berlin in 1967, and followed her husband, David, to Abu Dhabi in the same year. In 1969, Frauke joined the Centre for Documentation and Research in Abu Dhabi, part of the Presidential Court, in the Qasr Al Hosn. The Centre specialized in collecting archival material about the Gulf. Frauke was with the Centre for 39 years, while it moved to a purpose-built place and became the National Archives in 2014. Frauke has published English and German books and articles about the Gulf region and beyond. Her book From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates: A Society in Transition has become a textbook for universities. Her latest book Abu Dhabi, The United Arab Emirates and the Gulf: Fifty Years of Transformation, published in 2016, contains a collection of 30 articles, conference contributions and autobiographical notes. It was published in 2017 by Gerlach Press.

Meitha Al Mazrooei is a Ph.D. candidate in History, Theory, and Criticism of Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her M.S. in Critical, Curatorial & Conceptual Practices in Architecture from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Her curatorial and editorial work encompasses public programming for Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, publications for The National Pavilion of the United Arab Emirates, and the establishment of WTD Magazine. Her most recent editorial work includes co-editing two anthologies: On Foraging: Food Knowledge and Environmental Imaginaries in the UAE’s Landscape and In Plain Sight: Scenes from Aridly Abundant Landscapes.

Arva S. Ahmed is a food entrepreneur and cultural storyteller who has redefined how Dubai is seen—through its kitchens and neighborhoods rather than its skylines. In 2013, she founded Frying Pan Adventures, the city’s first walking food tour company, pioneering an approach that uncovered Dubai’s story through the everyday dishes and the diverse cultures that shape it. Today, Ahmed is also the creator of Ditch the Silver, a YouTube channel and food docu-series recently commissioned by OSN, which spotlights the food personalities and neighbourhood subcultures that define Dubai’s identity. Her voice has long been part of the region’s media landscape: a columnist for Friday magazine, co-host of the UAE’s first food podcast Deep Fried, and today as the food reporter on Dubai One TV’s DXBToday. Her work has appeared internationally on Netflix, Travel Channel, Food Network, iTV and CNN, earning her a reputation as one of the region’s most trusted cultural interpreters. Across these platforms, Ahmed advances a powerful idea: food is not just sustenance, but the most enduring way for cities in constant motion to preserve authenticity and human connection.

Rashad Bukhash has 35 years experience in the fields of planning, directing, managing and supervising modern architectural projects, conservation of historic buildings, museums, and landscaping projects. With his background in both architecture and conservation of historic buildings, he supervised the conservation of more than 215 historic buildings in Dubai and throughout the UAE. He also supervised the design and execution of more than 200 projects including universities, colleges, public buildings, parks and community facilities. Rashad supervised the design and execution of 14 museums in Dubai, including Dubai Museum, Sheikh Saeed Al-Maktoum House, Heritage House, Al Ahmadiya School, the Falcon Museum, and Sarooq Al-Hadid Archaeology Museum. He has written and edited more than 35 books on architecture, history and traditional architecture of Dubai and the U.A.E. Rashad won many prizes, his latest honor being his receipt this year of UAE Order for Culture and Creativity in the Custodian Tier.

Lina Najem is a researcher and writer at the cultural consultancy, Barker Langham. A passionate storyteller, she crafts impactful narratives across media. Drawing on her academic research alongside experience in documentary filmmaking, podcasting and news journalism, her work examines culture, memory and power, amplifying authentic voices and translating complex ideas for public audiences. She holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies from Columbia University and a B.A. from Yale University.

Hind Mezaina is an artist, writer and film curator from Dubai. Working primarily in analogue photography and more recently in video, her practice delves into themes of collective memory, the notion of heritage, and depictions of the UAE in the media. Mezaina is also the founder of The Culturist blog; Moving Image Editor at Tribe, a non-profit publication and platform that focuses on photography and moving image from the Arab World; and the co-founder of Tea with Culture podcast. She has curated film screenings for local institutions, including Louvre Abu Dhabi, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Sharjah Art Foundation, The Africa Institute, Alliance Française Dubai and Jameel Arts Centre.

Prasad Shetty is an urbanist based in Mumbai, India. He is one of the founding members of the School of Environment and Architecture and is currently Professor and Dean at the school (sea.edu.in). He is a partner at the Bard Studio, Mumbai (bardstudio.in), and was also one of the co-founders of the urban research network, CRIT (crit.in). Prasad has studied architecture (B-Arch, Mumbai University) and urban management (M-A, Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam). Earlier, he has worked with: Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority as an Urban Manager, MMR – Heritage and Environment Society as Secretary, Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture as a Lecturer, Town Administration of Mendefera, Eritrea as an Urban Management expert. His work includes exploratory research and experimental pedagogy on different aspects of urban form, experience, practice and culture.

Rupali Gupte is an architect, artist and urbanist based in Mumbai, India. She is the co-founder, director and Professor at the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA), and partner along with Prasad Shetty at BardStudio. She has been a senior Research fellow at the University of Brighton in the UK and a part of the urban research collective CRIT. Her work involves extensive research on contemporary South Asian architecture and urbanism with a focus on housing and urban form, tactical spatial practices, and the role of gender in shaping habitation. Her work often crosses disciplinary boundaries and takes different forms – writings, drawings, mixed-media works, installations, curation, conversations, walks and spatial interventions. Her works have been shown nationally and internationally in biennales including the 56th Venice Art Biennale, X São Paulo Biennale of Art and Architecture, Seoul Biennale of Art and Architecture, Dhaka Art Summit, and galleries and museums such as MACBA, Barcelona, MAAT Museum, Lisbon, Mumbai Art Room, Devi Art Foundation, Project 88, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and IFBE, Mumbai. She has been a part of invited lectures, juries and review panels across the globe.

Khaled Adham is an Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning. He holds a B.Sc. in Architectural Engineering from Cairo University, a Master of Architecture (M.Arch) from Kent State University, and a PhD in Architecture from Texas A&M University. Adham has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in architecture and urban planning at universities in the United States, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Most recently, Adham held a research fellowship at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. Teaching responsibilities have included architectural design studios, urban design, urban planning, and the history and theory of architecture. His research focuses on how late capitalism shaped Cairo’s urban and physical transformations, with particular attention to housing and urbanization of the Middle-class in Cairo. Across teaching, research and practice, Adham’s record reflects sustained engagement with contemporary urbanization in Egypt and the wider region, informed by both scholarly inquiry and professional experience.

Rem Koolhaas founded OMA in 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. In 1978, he published Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. In 1995, his book S,M,L,XL summarized the work of OMA in “a novel about architecture”. He co-heads the work of both OMA and AMO, the research branch of OMA, operating in areas beyond the realm of architecture. His built work includes Pont Simone Veil in Bordeaux (2024), Taipei Performing Arts Center (2022), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), the Qatar National Library (2017), Fondation Galeries Lafayette Anticipation in Paris (2018), Fondazione Prada in Milan (2015/2018), the headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing (2012). and Seattle Central Library (2004). He directed the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, is a professor at Harvard University, and curated Countryside: The Future (2020), an exhibition about the non-urban areas around the globe at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Tala Gharagozlou is an architectural designer engaged in both professional practice and research. Her practice is currently divided between projects with museums such as the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and the Louvre in Paris and residential adaptive reuse projects in Dubai. She was a technical reviewer for the 16th Award Cycle (2023–2025) of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. She also collaborates at NYUAD with colleagues in visual arts, performance, theater and urbanism. She started her career working for Frank Gehry in Los Angeles, moving on to interior and exhibition design in Paris and commercial projects in London with the Soho House Group as lead architect. She was the editor of the Yale architectural journal Perspecta 44: Domain (MIT Press, 2011).