IIAA
Twenty workshops moving from foundational artistic skills to architecture, collaborative projects, and exhibitions.
1 Workshop 1 The Art of Drawing with PencilsEvery great work of art begins with a line. In this ten-session journey, students discover how a simple pencil can turn observation into imagination, light into emotion, and an empty sheet of paper into a world that did not exist before.
2 Workshop : 2 Watercolor Painting for BeginnersA ten-session creative journey into the poetry of water and color—where students learn to control transparency, light, movement, and emotion, transforming a blank sheet of paper into a living work of art.
7 Workshop : 7 Mastering SketchUpA ten-session hands-on journey into architectural design and 3D modeling with SketchUp, where students progress from essential tools and accurate drawing to complete architectural models, materials, components, scenes, and presentation. By the end, an idea that once existed only on paper becomes a three-dimensional space that can be explored, refined, and communicated.
8 Workshop : 8 Using Lumion for BeginnersA ten-session hands-on journey into architectural visualization with Lumion, where students progress from importing and organizing a 3D model to creating materials, landscapes, lighting, atmosphere, cameras, images, and animation. By the end of the workshop, students learn how to transform a silent digital model into a compelling architectural experience filled with light, material, movement, environment, and life.
9 Workshop : 9 Canva Design and Artificial IntelligenceA ten-session creative and educational journey combining visual design, Canva, and artificial intelligence. Students learn how to transform an initial idea into powerful visual communication through typography, color, imagery, composition, branding, and AI-assisted creativity. From posters and presentations to digital content and original visual concepts, students discover how technology can expand human imagination—not replace it.
10 Workshop : 10 Perspective Drawing MasteryA ten-session artistic and educational journey into the art and science of perspective drawing, where students learn how to transform a flat sheet of paper into a convincing world of depth, distance, architecture, and space. From horizon lines and vanishing points to interiors, streets, buildings, human scale, light, and imaginative environments, students develop the ability not only to draw what they see, but to understand space—and ultimately to imagine places that do not yet exist.
11 Workshop : 11 The Magic of 3D Illusion DrawingA ten-session artistic and creative journey into the fascinating world of 3D illusion drawing, where students learn how to transform a flat surface into an image that appears to rise from the page, sink beneath it, or open into an impossible space. Through perspective, light, shadow, scale, anamorphosis, and optical illusion, students discover how art can challenge perception—culminating in an original artwork that makes the viewer stop and ask: Is this really a drawing?
12 Workshop : 12 Sculpture and Relief in Islamic ArtA ten-session artistic and educational journey into sculpture and relief within Islamic art, where students discover how stone, wood, plaster, stucco, and metal have been transformed across centuries into surfaces alive with geometry, vegetal ornament, calligraphy, rhythm, texture, light, and shadow. From studying historical examples and understanding composition to drawing, carving, layering, and modeling, students create an original contemporary relief inspired by Islamic artistic traditions without simply copying the past.
13 Workshop : 13 Ten Countries with the Most Mosques and Their Most Famous MosquesA ten-session cultural and architectural journey across ten countries with large numbers of mosques and exceptionally rich Islamic architectural traditions. In each session, students travel visually to a different country, explore some of its most celebrated mosques, and discover how history, climate, geography, materials, craftsmanship, technology, and local culture transformed the architecture of the mosque from one region to another. The mosque becomes an open book through which students can read the extraordinary diversity of Islamic civilization. Educational Note: Published mosque counts and country rankings vary considerably according to source, year, and whether prayer halls and smaller places of worship are included. For this reason, the ten countries in this workshop are presented as an educational selection of countries with very large mosque traditions rather than as a definitive statistical ranking.
14 Workshop : 14 Workshop Tour of New York's Premier Creative InstitutionsA ten-visit educational journey through leading institutions connected to architecture, art, design, engineering, technology, digital fabrication, and creative innovation. Students move beyond the traditional classroom into studios, laboratories, exhibitions, and academic environments, discovering how ideas are researched, drawn, modeled, fabricated, presented, and transformed into possible careers. New York itself becomes an open classroom—and every visit becomes a window into the future.
15 Workshop : 15 Islamic Art and Architecture TourA ten-visit educational and cultural journey through New York’s museums, libraries, cultural institutions, and architectural spaces, where students encounter Islamic art and architecture through original objects, manuscripts, calligraphy, geometry, ceramics, textiles, metalwork, decorative arts, and built space. Rather than simply looking at beautiful objects, students learn how to read them—discovering the materials, mathematics, craftsmanship, history, cultural exchange, and human stories hidden within them.
16 Workshop : 16 The Art of Outdoor 3D Illusions — Creating Interactive SpacesA ten-session artistic and design journey into the extraordinary world of outdoor 3D illusion art, where students learn how to transform an ordinary pavement, plaza, wall, or public surface into an interactive visual experience that appears to rise from the ground, sink beneath it, or open into an impossible world. Through perspective, anamorphosis, site analysis, scale, materials, color, light, safety, fabrication, and photography, students move from the first sketch to a complete proposal for an outdoor installation in which the public becomes part of the artwork itself.
17 Workshop : 17 Artists for Palestine — Global Voices of ResistanceA ten-session artistic and intellectual journey exploring Palestinian and international artists whose work has engaged with Palestine or with the broader human experiences of memory, displacement, exile, borders, identity, human rights, and belonging. Through street art, political cartoons, painting, photography, installation, video, and conceptual art, students discover how visual language can preserve memory, question power, document experience, and carry a local human story across borders to a global audience.
18 Workshop : 18 The Arab Palette — Ten Visionary ArtistsA ten-session artistic and intellectual journey into contemporary Arab art through ten distinctive creative voices whose work explores identity, migration, memory, landscape, the body, heritage, technology, environment, and belonging. Moving across painting, abstraction, photography, digital art, installation, performance, site-specific practice, and archival exploration, students discover how personal experience can become visual language—and how an artist can begin with a particular place or memory yet create work capable of speaking to the world.
19 Workshop : 19 Ten Influential Arab Architects WorldwideA ten-session architectural and intellectual journey through the ideas and works of ten influential Arab architects who helped shape modern and contemporary architectural thought. From Hassan Fathy’s architecture of earth and community to Zaha Hadid’s radical spatial geometries, from Mohamed Makiya and Rifat Chadirji’s search for a modern Iraqi identity to Ammar Khammash’s architecture rooted in landscape, geology, and archaeology, students discover how architecture can connect heritage, climate, materials, craftsmanship, technology, culture, and human experience.
20 Workshop : 20 Ten Visionary Artists from the Muslim WorldA ten-session artistic and intellectual journey through ten visionary artists connected to the Muslim world and its wider cultural landscapes. From photography, painting, and calligraphy to installation, performance, digital media, and public art, students discover how contemporary artists transform memory, identity, migration, language, cities, borders, heritage, and personal experience into powerful visual languages capable of speaking across cultures.
Workshops we have already run. Registration is closed, but the work and the images stay here.
6 Workshop : 6 Arabesque — The Beauty of Islamic Decorative ArtCompletedA ten-session artistic and educational journey into the extraordinary world of Arabesque and Islamic decorative art, where students discover how geometry, nature, rhythm, repetition, and color come together to create patterns of remarkable beauty. From the first circle and geometric grid to floral forms and a final original composition, students learn not merely to reproduce ornament, but to understand the
5 Workshop : 5 Types of Arabic CalligraphyCompletedA ten-session educational and artistic journey into the world of Arabic calligraphy, where students explore its history, tools, principles, and major styles while developing an understanding of proportion, rhythm, balance, letter construction, and composition—culminating in an original calligraphic artwork that brings together discipline, beauty, and the spirit of the written form.
4 Workshop : 4 Pastel ColorsCompletedA ten-session artistic journey into the luminous world of pastel, where students learn to transform pure color into light, atmosphere, texture, movement, and emotion. From the first expressive mark to the final artwork, students develop essential techniques while discovering the confidence and visual language to create work that is distinctly their own.
3 Workshop : 3 Oil PaintingCompletedAn immersive ten-session journey into the art of oil painting, where students progress from understanding color, materials, light, and texture to creating a complete painting that carries their own vision, emotion, and emerging artistic voice.
