Back to Powerlist

 

 

Matthew Engele heads the design for the international organisation’s Middle East region, which currently totals 70 employees. He is also a principal and as part of the regional executive management team is responsible for managing the Middle East business’s future strategic growth. Engele has been a key figure in Woods Bagot’s expansion into regions such as Morroco, with the design of The St Regis Hotel in Marrakesh and KSA with recent high profile competition wins.

His passion for sustainability has shaped and challenged the Middle East studio to design for environmental, social and economic sustainability. This can be seen in the highly sustainable & innovative MC2 – Masdar City project that was a Silver Winner at the recent World Architecture News awards 2020.

Engele also leads the ‘Diversity in Design Initiative’ for the Middle East studio, which has been set up to promote diversity within the design teams at Woods Bagot. 13 nationalities are currently collaborating within the Dubai office, 44% of the total management team and 55% of associates and associate principals are females, figures which continue to increase year on year. During 2021, Engele will continue to be focused on leading the Middle East studio’s high-performance design teams on high profile projects throughout the region.

Regarding expansion plans, Engele comments: “We currently operates in 16 different cities across the world and in Q1 of 2020, we successfully opened our Los Angeles office in the USA. We are constantly evaluating opportunities for growth into new markets and given our current workload of projects coming from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia we see great opportunities for continued growth in KSA. Other regions of growth in Egypt, with the successful launch of an exciting residential project in Cairo, as well as Morocco with the Woods Bagot design St Regis hotel set for construction in 2021.”