Wherever you stand,
be the soul of that place.
ليكن الجمالُ الذي نحبّه هو ما نفعله
Let the beauty we love
be what we do.
Atlanta, 2025
Produced as a comprehensive collection of undergraduate architectural work at Georgia Tech, this artifact investigates material sequencing through vellum, layered transparency, and calibrated visual organization. Serving as the most current iteration of the portfolio, it consolidates research, design methods, and representational studies developed across the program. Completed in December 2025, it received the Portfolio Award of Excellence for its divergence from conventional formats, its ranging content, and its meticulous assemblage.
Nour Khalifa
Contact:
(404) 747 5174
Recent projects—Thresholds of Matter, Urban Roots Matrix, and Commonscape—engage themes of ecology, material intelligence, and the social dimensions of design. Urban Roots Matrix, recipient of the Georgia Tech Architecture Capstone Prize, reimagines civic space through networks of localized food production and adaptive infrastructural systems. Commonscape, awarded the AIA Georgia Student Design Award and the Niles Bolton Prize of Excellence, extends these inquiries toward shared landscapes of access and repair. Thresholds of Matter examines emerging relationships between automation and architecture, exploring how new technologies may reshape craft, authorship, and spatial agency.
Current research includes two papers in development and a project documenting how individuals describe place and placelessness within the home—tracing how memory distorts, reconstructs, and gives form to belonging.
Beyond studio and research work, the role of founding creative director for Sandbox—a student-led publication and platform for critical dialogue in architecture—has supported the cultivation of collaborative discourse. Additional contributions include helping establish Georgia Tech Creatives, an interdisciplinary collective for artistic collaboration. Writing and visual work extend across drawing, text, and discursive engagement, approaching architecture as both an investigative practice and a framework for shared thinking.
Class of 2026
B.S Architecture
Gold Scholar
Dean’s List
Barcelona Study Abroad
May 24’ - July 24’
Atlanta Girls School Class of 2022
High School
Salutatorian
Governor’s Honors Program
May 21’ - July 21’
Berry College
Social Studies Concentration
Georgia Institute of Technology
May 25’ - August 25’
Teaching introductory architecture concepts + techniques; leading a studio section and curriculum
Architectural Intern ASD SKY
Atlanta, Georgia
May 23’ - August 23’
Refining design concepts and diagrams; Revit; Site maps
Creative Director, Founding Member, Contributor
October 24’ - Present
Design and brand a student-led architetcural publication, amplifying emerging and established voices in discourse. Thematic inquiries chosen each semester. Navigated the complexities of founnding a new publication.
Georgia Tech Creatives
Creative Director, Founding Member
December 22’ - May 25’
Spearhead vision and brand identity for the largest organized creative presence on campus, expanding its influence across Atlanta. Develop innovative marketing strategies and design impactful visual materials. Mantain high creative standards while mentoring the executive board.
Arab Student Organization
Vice President
Georgia Institute of Technology
August 23’ - May 25’
Advance the goal of building a community for Arab-identifying student on campus by organizing social events.
Georgia Tech School of Architecture, December 25’
NextGen Cohort: AIA Women in Leadership Conference
American Institute of Architects, November 25’
Capstone Prize
Most Exemplary Architecture
Georgia Institute of Technology, April 25’
AIA Student Design Award
American Institute of Architects, April 25’
Exemplary Housing Schema, Niles Bolton Studio
Niles Bolton Associates, Georgia Tech School of Architecture, December 24’
Third-Year Portfolio Award
Georgia Tech School of Architecture, December 24’
Second-Year Portfolio Award
Georgia Tech School of Architecture, December 23’
Porous Housing: Reimagining Urban Domesticity Through Thresholds
In collaboration with Katherine Wright
ARCC, Pending Publication, 2025
Cross-Scalar Strategies for Re-Localized Food Production and Urban Metabolism
In collaboration with Adara Naui
ARCC, Pending Publication, 2025
Last Updated 24.10.31
Excerpts of prose
This work is less a collection than a continuity. It moves as thought does—wandering, looping, and sometimes colliding with itself. There are no clear separations between memory and the present, between what has ended and what continues to live on.
Here, architecture and language share the same impulse: to hold what might otherwise disappear. The rooms are emotional ones—spaces built from love, absence, and the need to preserve what shifts with time.
Each excerpt rests somewhere along this current. Some speak in fragments, others in full breaths, but all attempt to name the feeling of becoming after loss. Together they form a self-portrait in motion—one that resists conclusion, choosing instead to remain open, evolving.
43 of 50 /// five houses
37 of 50 /// chameleon behavior
49 of 50 /// our universe
50 of 50 /// update
hey mom, can i stay with you?
just this once.
they all talk about their mothers and i am always at a loss for
anything to say
the house is gone, we sold it
i cried a little, and it felt dumb to mourn
a place
but that place knew me
it saw me grow up
it was always there to go
back to
on the best of days and
the worst of days
it never changed.
... we chose to paint the walls
in our new house
“agreeable gray”
sometimes i get this chill
when i’m alone in a crowd
like all i want is to
turn right on our street
and find you
cooking in the kitchen or reading in the living room
i forgot to unscrew the gold knobs that you loved
and take them with me
remember?
the ones you bought to replace the ugly silver ones on
all the drawers
they don’t know
what happened in that house
and so they don’t deserve
to live in my house
its already hard for me to
remember what the
living room looked like
can i dream with you?
just one more time.
i want to show you everything i’m proud of
and everything i messed up on
i want to hear your laugh
and feel the warmth radiating from your chest
into mine
i want to tell you my dreams
i want hear what you think of my nose ring and new hair
i want to retrace every detail of
your face and remind you that
i love you.
i’m growing up, and it feels
like i’m packing things into
donation boxes and
leaving them at the
goodwill curb
it feels good to let go,
but sometimes you sit there
wondering what you forgot about
so long ago.
i think you would have loved the
west architecture wing. you
always wanted to study
architecture.
every time i finish a project for school
i wonder what you
would have said about it.
i showed my friends around campus
when i really just wanted you
to see it.
i moved in to my first apartment without you
when everyone else brought
their mothers.
i got my first paycheck and you
didn’t get to celebrate it with me.
even now, sometimes i feel like a
little kid again, scared and alone,
and all i want is to run to you.
too bad fate had other plans.
i taped up pictures of you
all around my new room
to feel you here.
sometimes i go days without
thinking about you
and some days i
can’t get over the
unbearable feeling of your absence.
it gets just a little easier
every time i wake up.
i’m so happy right now.
i just wanted to share that with you.
i think i’m content with my life.
house number one said:
welcome to the universe.
grow, baby girl,
in your parents’ arms
look around you
with your new hazel eyes
in awe of every little
thing that
no one really notices
anymore, sit on your mom’s
lap as she works hard
towards her degree
in urban planning
running in the neighborhood
playing catch in the sun
absorbing the beauty of
the earliest wonders of the
life unfolding around me.
house number two came
and went,
and so did the next, but
home followed us
house number four smiled:
press your face against
the glass, feel the
cold spreading on your
little nose and your
breath fogging up
the barrier between
warmth and snow
show your sister how
to play and water the
philodendron growing in
the kitchen, smell mama’s
cooking from your bedroom
and hear your dad calling
your name from down my
short hallway
we were so innocent then
our silly childhood banter and
laughter filling
the house
my sister and i
running after each other
as my parents
sat on the couch
family friends coming over
as our little home expanded
i remember lying on the
bare carpet in a bare room
with my family
staring at the ceiling fan
all the furniture gone,
frames and books and toys
packed away in boxes
hand-woven traditional carpets
rolled up, my mom’s growing
collection of silverware and platters
already on their way down to georgia
our last night in
house number four
still felt just as full
as any other
as we laid there, together
as we entered, house number five whispered:
here, your memories
will lie. nine of your
years will be spent
in my walls
you will evolve and i will
hold you. your brother
will be born here
and your mother
will die here.
i will be the backdrop of
the most beautiful and
complex memories
that reside in your mind
your books will line the
built-in shelves in your
room, and you will tape
hundreds of pictures on
the wall behind your bed,
and you will set up your
easel and paint, and your
mom will start
woodworking, and her
furniture and handiwork
will remain here.
you will hear your dad’s
recitations of the quran
reverberating, and you
will never
fully grasp how
intertwined we are,
you and i.
what happens when
nothing i want to feel
is accessible
small sparks
glimpses
openings
of feeling
close almost immediately
tears don’t flow
these words are
forced
my homework is open in
the background
glaring at me
distracting me
this maddening
mindless
maze
is making
me
a
machine
i’m losing
everything all over
again
stripped back to the
confused
little girl
i am
i want to feel
big and
strong
who’s she anyway
it’s like i exhaled
when i stepped foot in my
house
but now that’s
leaving me
too
sold
to some random family that will never know
that someone
was born here
and someone died
in these very walls
to someone who will never know the stories
behind all the absent furniture
and stripped walls
***
someone to miss
i want
someone to know
every part of me
and understand
me
by simply glancing
in my eyes
to understand me
more than i
understand
even myself
and now i’m
somewhere in-between
why does everything
slip away
stuck
somewhere
in-between
looking for the
missing piece
in me
in someone else
i cannot even articulate
what it looks
like
who it could be
what it should be
***
i am
uninspired
and it
shows
hunting for inspiration
like a rabid dog
in parties
in people
in him
in other things
maybe i should look
inside
first
other things
if i were to make
a pie chart
of my life,
“other things”
would dominate
???
where are you
who am i writing to
who is all of this for?
i can change everything
about myself
with a snap
chameleon behavior
regurgitations
of past selves
come up
and i force them
back down
with a hard swallow
i healed the way
someone with a broken body
would heal without
medical attention
meaning -
i didn’t
i looked at you
and felt myself suddenly noticing
the sun
illuminating our faces
tingling our skin
brightening the world
i just let it pour over my face,
submitted to the warmth
i felt the car humming beneath me
i noticed your breathing
and your scent
and the way your eyes would split their time
between the road
and me
you looked out at the expanse
and explained how much prettier it
used to be
before they cut down the trees
i noticed the way
the slow flow of water sounds
with the leaves rustling ever so slightly
i felt the slight cold making my cheeks
barely rosier - or maybe it was because
my face flushes
when i’m with you
it is in moments like these
that i catch myself
feeling a resounding sensation of
contentedness
that all i really need
is you,
because you give me
the kind of love
that is felt without speaking
that sets my mind at ease
that sows happiness into my life
the kind of intimacy
that is felt by knowing that i am with someone
who has no doubts about their feelings for me
that is magnified through growth alongside one another
that is felt by being seen in a true light
that is intensified through reassurance and appreciation
i think of you
and i think of everything you are,
and i am still always slightly
in disbelief
that someone as special as you
found me
***
i love how patient you are
and the way your hair glows as the
sun plays with your curls
i love your laugh
and the way you dress
i love the generosity you got from your mom
and the kindness you got from your dad
i love how gently you comfort me
and when you call me just to call me
i love when we lose track of how long we’ve been talking
and when we get caught up in a lengthy conversation
i love the way you look at me
and the depths of feeling i experience around you
i love that loving you feels fruitful
and that i get to call you mine
it truly feels like a privilege to know you,
to love you,
to choose you.
i want to pour into you
because you give so much of yourself to the world
because you love me even when i don’t love myself
because i am proud of who you are
because you are my mirror when i need
to see myself clearly.
what are the odds?
of all the times we could have existed,
of all the places we could have been,
of all the universes we could have inhabited -
we were put in the same time
place
and universe
where i was lucky and blessed enough to find you.
i miss you in the quietest,
most subtle of ways,
like a deep ache in my bones that resurfaces
whenever i least expect it.
i realized
that that the reason i work so hard
is because i would have wanted to make you proud –
as if you were still here to
see me grow.
i fell in love with architecture.
with every presentation, every deadline,
every day that passes,
i can feel myself growing more confident,
more sure of what i’m capable of.
but each milestone feels incomplete.
i wish i could have practiced my presentations with
you there to listen,
called you every time i felt
overwhelmed, felt your arms around me when i needed
comfort to navigate college, to navigate
life.
i never miss you any less.
i’ve only learned how to carry it differently.
it felt like you were close
but so achingly far at the same time.
and i cried.
the kind of tears only a daughter without her mother cries,
wishing, begging for the impossible:
for you to be there, just for one day.
i’ve grown up so much.
i love the life i’m building, the people in it,
the lessons i’ve learned,
and the discipline that keeps me moving forward.
but even now, i still search for you.
in strangers on the street.
in the way someone’s laugh echoes.
in the crinkle of eyes that reminds me of your smile.
i look for traces of you in everything.
the way you’d listen to me as we sat together in my room.
the way you’d cry with me.
the way you’d lean in close when i needed you most.
i truly wonder—
if you saw me today,
would you smile?
would you be proud?
so much of what once reminded me of you is gone now.
there’s so little left except the legacy
i am trying my best to carry.
we, your children,
are the strongest parts of you that remain.
we owe our lives to your existence.
this is how it goes.
memories are all we have to hold on to.
i hope that you are resting.
i love you.
sincerely,
nour khalifa
11.26.24