Founder & CEO · Rithu
Founder & CEO · Rithu
Where architecture, economy, law and people meet, she finds what a heritage place is really worth.
A transdisciplinary mind for places that don't fit one discipline. Architect, academic, researcher, heritage consultant and designer, for over twenty years, in parallel, not one after another. She reads a historic place through every field it touches, and connects the ones nobody else connects.
Her reach
From Cairo to 10 countries
Commissions, research, talks and proposals by Dr. Hanaa Moosa, before and since founding Rithu: Saudi Arabia, Oman, South Korea, New Zealand, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Italy and the United Kingdom.
What a transdisciplinary reading finds
Soundscape as heritage
Sound × conservation
Calls to prayer, workshops, markets and mulids as part of the spirit of place, turned into itineraries for Al-Darb Al-Ahmar. International Design Journal, 2019.
The Entertainment-Led Documentation Model
Media × documentary heritage
TV drama, film and social media as channels that carry documentary heritage to people. Research for the International Centre for Documentary Heritage (ICDH), under the auspices of UNESCO, 2025.
The Economic Blind Spots framework
Economy × adaptive reuse
Opportunity costs, economic chains and regional sectors added to reuse planning. International Design Journal, 2025.
The living city of the dead
Heritage railways and tramways
Death × the living city
Cemetery zones regenerated as living parts of the city. CICOP Italy, 2019.
Ordinance lines and heritage
Heritage railways and tramways
Heritage railways and tramways
Law × urban fabric
How old ordinance lines still shape, and split, Historic Cairo's streets, with a way to reconcile them. ArchCairo, 2019.
Heritage railways and tramways
Heritage railways and tramways
Heritage railways and tramways
Transport × identity
Egypt's lost trams as identity and opportunity. International Design Journal, 2020.
The Prevailing Value System
The Prevailing Value System
The Prevailing Value System
Values × everything
The value system that prevails in a community shapes every other context, so she reads it first. PhD 2014, published 2018.
Her experience before founding Rithu
Her personal experience, not Rithu's portfolio
Everything below was done by Dr. Hanaa Moosa as an individual, before Rithu existed.
2004–2012 · Architectural practice
Architect and senior architect at SAC, AFCO, EHAF Consulting Engineers and Grandeur Design Studio: hospitals, towers, resorts and conference buildings.
2004–2020 · Teaching architecture
October 6 University, then Shorouk Academy; Associate Professor of Architecture in 2020.
2014 · PhD, Cairo University
Heritage Buildings Reuse from Conservation to Community Development, the origin of the Prevailing Value System.
2015–2020 · Community contribution
Head of the Community Contribution Team, Higher Institute of Engineering, El Shorouk.
2017–2020 · Urban Regeneration of Historic Cairo, Phase III
Individual consultant for adaptive reuse and urban conservation; main researcher of the adaptive reuse report; permanent team member. The project belongs to the Ministry of Antiquities and the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University. It is not a Rithu project.
2018–2019 · International research and committees
Papers in London, Italy and Egypt; consultant to the Egyptian network of CICOP Italy; invited speaker and scientific committee member, Florence and Turin, 2019.