Reza Pourvaziry

Chair of Urban Economy Forum, Co-Director, the World Urban Pavilion in Regent Park - Powered by Daniels, Canada

Reza Pourvaziry is an Architect with over 20 years of experience. He obtained his master’s degree in architecture in 2001. He is also an international urban researcher who focuses on the concept of architecture and process of design and sustainability. His work in the field were presented and featured in major articles, at international conferences and broadcasts.

He established the International Art & Architecture Research Association (IAARA) in 2002 to work and conduct research pertaining to urban architecture, habitat, and settlements, with a focus on sustainability. He has created multiple architectural projects that earned him international architecture awards, including world architecture community for the Nashr Yadavaran Administrative Building and housing project for Atlas of the Unbuilt World by the British Council. He has been a member of juries, steering and scientific committees of programs in the field of art, architecture, and urbanism. He created different development projects and programs and started working as the member of Steering Committee of UN-Habitat’s best practices since 2004. He continues to work closely with the UN-Habitat and was designated by the Under-Secretary-General of the UN and former Executive Director of UN-Habitat as the First Global Advocate of UN-Habitat in 2016. He was introduced at the 40th anniversary of UN-Habitat, which was celebrated at the Habitat III conference in Quito, in 2016.

He established the Middle East Regional Center for Best Practice and Local Leadership from 2012 to 2014. In 2014, the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism of Iran recognized him as one of the contemporary architects in the book ‘Contemporary Architecture’ and since then he worked as the President and Co-Founder of the International City Leaders (ICL), and he was designated for City Prosperity Initiative – Metropolitan Cities initiative by the UN-Habitat. The ICL and UN-Habitat work together on various research, workshops, and conferences and one of the main publications is World Cities Report launched in 2016. Presently, he is the Chair of Urban Economy Forum working on urban architecture projects globally.

He has organized various conferences, initiatives, and workshops around the world. He is the Founder and Chair of the Urban Economy Forum (UEF), since 2018. Reza is also one of the initiators of the World Urban Pavilion in Regent Park, a collaborative initiative between the UEF and UN-Habitat, supported by the Government of Canada and The Daniels Corporation. The Pavilion was officially launched on April 21, 2020. The Pavilion is a global knowledge exchange hub to share best practices, innovation and research in sustainable urban development and revitalization from countries around the world. The Pavilion is also the Global Hub of the SDG Cities Initiative, the flagship program of the UN-Habitat.