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Issam Azzam

Issam Azzam is a landscape designer and urban planner whose work centres upon desert landscapes. Recipient of the 2024 Hart Howerton Fellowship, he has conducted extensive fieldwork on traditional oasis systems across Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. In 2025, Issam was selected as the LAF National Olmsted Scholar to support his ongoing work in the region. His project Oases: Networks of Knowledge seeks to rebuild connections between oasis communities through a platform that documents and shares adaptive landscape practices, informing broader strategies for resilient urban design in desert environments.

Issam is a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he received master’s degrees in Landscape Architecture (with distinction) and Urban Planning (with distinction). He also holds a BSc in Biological Sciences from University College London. He has collaborated on design research projects and studios across the Arab world, including The Oasis Effect (2022), Tunisian Nightscapes (2023), Under the Palm Trees: Marrakesh (2024), and Fragmentation (2025) for which he received Harvard’s GIS Fisher Prize. Upon graduation, he was awarded the Thesis Prize in Landscape Architecture and the ASLA Award of Honor for his thesis Chemical Occupations on remediative design strategies for the Fayoum Oasis in Egypt.

Chemical Occupations
Anti-Colonial Reactions in the Desert

عزبة عبد القوي سالم
Al-Kawy Salem

^{In Al-Kawy Salem, the Bahr Yusuf Canal brought the Nile’s floods and fertile sediment, as its overspill was captured by farmers who made the land fertile in the desert.}

الريان
Al-Rayan

And that’s what it was, right on the edge of the deep Sahara. It was here in Al-Rayan, that the Fayoumis would welcome and host those travelling deeper into the desert.

نقلون
Naqlun

Naqlun is concealed deep in the desert, where the fierce winds form dunes in large crests.

Oases
Networks of Knowledge

A Seat At The Table

Between Waters

Adapted Traditions

Fragmented Floodplains

Bloom: The Open Laboratory

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