Submission declined on 4 August 2025 by DoubleGrazing (talk). This draft is not adequately supported by reliable sources. Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires that all content be supported by reliable sources. Reliable sources include: reputable newspapers, magazines, academic journals, and books from respected publishers. Unacceptable sources include: personal blogs, social media, predatory publishers, most tabloids, and websites where anyone can contribute. Replace any unreliable sources with high-quality sources. If you cannot find a reliable source for the material, it should be removed. This draft lacks inline citations. Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires that all content be supported by reliable sources. We require inline citations (footnotes) to show which source supports which specific statement. You must place an inline citation directly after: quotations; any material whose verifiability is likely to be challenged or is contentious; any material about living people. Please edit your draft to support your statements with inline citations. Learn how to create inline citations in the: Source Editor: Introduction to referencing with Wiki Markup. VisualEditor: Introduction to referencing with VisualEditor. If you would like to continue working on the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window. If you have not resolved the issues listed above, your draft will be declined again and potentially deleted. If you need extra help, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. Please do not remove reviewer comments or this notice until the submission is accepted. Where to get help If you need help editing or submitting your draft, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. These venues are only for help with editing and the submission process, not to get reviews. If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed. How to improve a draft Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia – a basic overview on how to edit Wikipedia. Help:Wikitext – how to use the markup Help:Referencing for beginners – how to include references Wikipedia:Article development – how to develop your article Wikipedia:Writing better articles – how to improve your article Wikipedia:Verifiability – make sure your article includes reliable third-party sources You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Add tags to your draft Editor resources Easy tools: Citation bot (help) | Advanced: Fix bare URLs Declined by DoubleGrazing 10 months ago. Last edited by WereSpielChequers 3 months ago. Reviewer: Inform author. Resubmit Please note that if the issues are not fixed, the draft will be declined again.

• Comment: I would also strongly recommend cutting down the contents quite drastically. Wikipedia is not meant to be a comprehensive catalogue of everything someone has ever done. Focus on the most notable achievements, and describe them succinctly. (By way of comparison, this is already the size of the Norman Foster article, and that has been nearly 25 years in the making!) DoubleGrazing (talk) 08:53, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

• Comment: Please remove all inline external links from body text, convert to citations where relevant. There should be no links pointing to external resources until the footnotes in the 'References' section. DoubleGrazing (talk) 08:49, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

• Comment: Far too much unreferenced content – where is all this information coming from? In articles on living people, pretty much every statement you make must be clearly supported by an inline citation to a reliable published source. Anything that cannot be thus supported must be removed. DoubleGrazing (talk) 08:48, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Edward McIntosh is a british / ecuadorian architect. He obtained his professional architecture degree from the Facultad de Arquitectura^[1] of the Universidad Catolica Santiago de Guayaquil. ^[2] After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Edward won a Fulbright Scholarship to continue his postgraduate studies at Columbia University's GSAPP. Edward has worked in several prominent projects including FIFA World Cup Stadia, Large scale mixed-use developments and as the designer of The Mukaab and New Murabba developments in Saudi Arabia

Edward started his training as an architect at the Facultad de Arquitectura of the Universidad Catolica Santiago de Guayaquil. After working for several local firms and creating his own practice, he continued his postgraduate studies at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation under a Fulbright Scholarship where he studied under Sir Peter Cook, Mark Rakatansky, Kenneth Frampton, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Joan Ockman, Reinhold Martin & Hernan Diaz Alonso graduating with awards and honors. During his postgraduate studies, Edward focused on the threshold realm between the real world and the virtual world, culminating in his 2007 project under Sir Peter Cook titled Capitalistic Symbiosis having renowned avant-garde speculative architect Lebbeus Woods as part of his jury. His research in this field influenced his award-winning proposals "Capitalistic Symbiosis" and "Zero Restrain Mobility" which won First Place in the Evolo 2007 Housing Competition and a special mention in the Evolo 2007 Skyscraper Competition . His interest in bringing the virtual world into the real world was further explored in experimental projects such as "Autonomous Living Units", a version of which was inserted into the virtual world platform of Second Life and exhibited at 2010 Saint Etienne Art Biennale.

These decades-long interest in merging of the virtual and physical worlds through architectural devices aided him to create the competition-winning entry for The Mukaab project in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2022. The Mukaab will not only serve as a bridge between the physical word and the virtual world, but it will also become the largest architectural manifestation of the Najdi architectural style

Early in his career, during his time in Ecuador, Edward researched and developed bamboo-based construction methodologies which culminated in ecologically-focused hospitality projects like La Meson del Quijote in Ayampe, Ecuador

In Ecuador, he started his career-long involvement designing large scale sport, event and entertainment venues working for ecuadorian architect Jose Vicente Viteri. His expertise in venues of this kind further expanded while working for internationally renowned sports architects Populous. During his tenure at Populous, Edward was part of the design teams that created Parc Olympique Lyonnais, Fisht Olympic Stadium, plus several sports masterplans and entertainment arena proposals

During his time at Populous, while based out of the UK, Edward remained connected to academia holding teaching positions as studio lead at Birmingham City University School of Architecture and Digital Techniques invited tutor at the Architectural Association

After his tenure at Populous, Edward worked as Chief Architect for Chinese multidisciplinary office JSD based out of Guangzhou, focusing on large-scale entertainment, residential, commercial, retail and hospitality projects. Notable proposals created by him during his tenure at JSD include the Lai Xi Stadium Complex, MBA Campus at Wuhan University, Yingde commercial city CBD, Foshan Furniture Mall, Hubei State Library and Enping Aviation Museum

Upon his return to the UK, he joined Grimshaw Architects focusing on sports and recreation projects in the Middle East and later relocating to Kuala Lumpur to work at Grimshaw's South East Asia office, where Grimshaw acted as precinct architects for the Tun Razak Exchangeproject, Malaysia's next generation CBD. Grimshaw worked on several aspects of the overall development with special focus on contributing to the design of The Exchange, TRX's lifestyle mall

Albeit small in the context of Grimshaw's remit, one of the most interesting, design-focused elements of design Edward developed was Singgah Sana Plaza, an intervention that straddles between "space" and "building" and has become one of the most vibrant public zones of Tun Razak Exchange serving as a magnetic gathering point, multi-directional connector and cultural hub

During this period McIntosh lectured in several institutions in South East Asia including the National University of Singapore and the University of the Philippines

In 2019, Edward moved to the Middle East to become AtkinsRéalis Regional Design Director for Architecture in the MENA region ^[3][4][5][6] During his time at AtkinsRéalis, Edward has been leading design teams involved in projects such as Marsa Al Arab (based on a concept developed by Killa Design), The Iris Icon, Diriyah Gate,^[7] Qiddiya City, The Royal Diriyah Equestrian and Polo Club^[8], New Murabba ^[9] and The Mukaab.^[10][11] Alongside providing design leadership and client management, Edward's primary focus has been to develop and mentor AtkinsRealis architecture team and to actively engage in the Middle East's academic and professional discussions regarding architecture and the built environment

McIntosh's design approach in the GCC region focuses on finding a balance between global design-best practice and the particularities of the regional context. His interest is to develop a legible identity representative of the historical trajectory of the GCC nations, their current standing in the world and the projection of their population's ambitions into the future. Most of his latest investigations are focused on learning from Video-Game development methodologies in order to comprehend the behavioral traits that make certain virtual constructs appealing to humans and through this find comparable parameters which could enhance human-occupied environments in the real world

Implementation of practical design principles and development methodologies to ensure the delivery quality and adherence to the project's Vision is another topic high on McIntosh's agenda

Since early 2022, Edward has been a prolific explorer in the field of AI enabled design having been part of exhibitions such as ADC's One Club for Creativity and investigating the use of AI generated imagery as a tool for lateral thinking within architectural design to create hybrids such as high-tech architecture blended with bamboo architecture details

Since his childhood Edward was intrigued by the human experience within the built environment. This interest has manifested in different streams of exploration such as typologies that mix High-Tech skyscrapers with bamboo architecture, imagining skyscrapers with alternative vertical circulation systems to replace standard elevator shafts, dwellings as extensions of the human body which would serve as interface between the real world and the virtual world, and envisioning viable living communities in the open ocean (seasteading)

Based on his earlier work constructing bamboo structures, Edward participated in the Spiretec international competition^[12] to design a mixed-use skyscraper in Noida, India alongside Dr. Kostas Grigoriadis. His competition-winning scheme proposed a concrete and still super-structure which resembled large scale "structural shelves" within which 6-storey buildings could be slotted-in creating a hybrid structure, and bringing the extra-large scale of a skyscraper down to a neighborhood-like human scale

During his studies of the history behind the skyscraper typology, McIntosh realized that since its inception, the skyscraper typology has been linked to the advancement of the elevator technology. The majority of high-rise buildings are constrained by a vertical core that houses services and vertical transportation. In his entry for 2007's Evolo Skyscraper competition, Edward explored the idea of an external means of vertical transportation that would "climb" the building carrying occupants with large scale robotic appendages. By freeing the high-rise typology from the constrains of the vertical elevator core, the tower itself could adopt new formal expressions. In this particular experiment, the proposed tower followed a lattice-like morphology that allowed for deeper penetration of natural light and a structural solution resembling a spaceframe system

in 2007, During his years at graduate school in New York city, Edward started his deep interested in William Gibson's writings (Sprawl, Bridge, Blue Ant & Jackpot trilogies) and was greatly influenced by Mamoru Oshii's 1995 Anime, Ghost in the Shell and Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. These interests, merged by living in New York within the financial exuberance which preceded the 2008 financial crisis served as a petri dish for McIntosh to envision a narrative-based project which he dubbed "Capitalistic Symbiosis". Capitalistic Symbiosis imagine the most intimate manifestation of architecture as being a second skin or cocoon within which individuals would live, immersed in a virtual reality construct that served as mediator between the real world and a curated fictional world in exchange for the computing power of their brains which would be used by technology giants for cheap data processing. The raise of VR, Social Media, Fake News and AI deep fakes in the 15 years after McIntosh's original vision was conceived, has given this project a somewhat prophetic aura

As an offshoot to his interest in the human-experience within architectural constructs (both in the real world and in the virtual), McIntosh started investigating the features that would make extremely unnatural environments appealing for long-term human inhabitation. During the early 2010's, within the graduate Design Studio he led at Birmingham City University's school of architecture, McIntosh's Studio created proposal's for the inhabitation of such environments most notably the Maunsell Forts in the Thames estuary. This explorations motivated him to get involved with the seasteading community through Joe Quirk, contributing to one of Quirk's books with designs that imagined different approaches to conventional seasteads. McIntosh's hypothesis regarding seasteads poses that they need to embody and incorporate features of the everyday, recognizable quotidian to avoid long-term residents to feel alienated or imprisoned. Thus, the proposal's he created focused on the lived-in "patina" and layers of human experience successful communities tend to have. Born out of this thinking he developed his thoughts around "Feel Crafting"

After his stints at Viteri Arquitectos in Ecuador and Populous in the UK, Edward has remained interested in the evolution of sports, performance and entertainment venues. Developing concepts focused on a more intensively used venue (incorporating mixed-use elements into the main program), merging venues with the surrounding urban fabric (by breaking down the mass and thinking creatively about control points and security) and exploring how VR, social media and digital technologies can augment the reach of the experience which so far has been limited to the physical domain of the built venue. One notable example was the development of the idea of the "virtual tier" while working for Populous on the Santiago Bernabeu design competition. While working on the design competition, it became obvious that any physical venue would have a capacity limitation due to distance to the match, viewing angles and spectator comfort and safety. With this in mind, McIntosh started to think about a solution to allow world-famous sports teams like Real Madrid with a fan base in the hundreds of millions located all around the globe, to be able to make those fans part of the experience in their physical venue. Drawing from his previous experimentations with architectural devices that inhabited the threshold between the real-world and the virtual-world, McIntosh proposed a 360 LED ring floating above the Bernabeu's seating bowl which would broadcast live-feeds from Real Madrid franchised sports bars from around the world during matches where in turn, fans would compete through gamified experiences to be featured in this virtual tier. In this manner both physical venue and remote, satellite venues could be linked in a blurred virtual-real realm. This device aimed at not only expanding the capacity of the physical venue beyond the realms of the conventional stadium, but also at creating a totally new monetization model with global reach in 2017 Edward (alongside Ecuadorian architect Gabriel Hidalgo) created a stadium proposal named Boedo 365 for San Lorenzo de Almagro Football club in the Boedo neighborhood of Buenos Aires. This proposal looked at the stadium typology like a neighborhood rather than a standalone venue in order to elevate the revenue generating potential of the real-estate proposition, as well as regenerating the club's historical neighborhood

• Design Middle East, Powerlist Top 30 Influential Architects 2025^[13]
• Design Middle East, Powerlist Top 30 Influential Architects 2024^[14]
• Design Middle East, Powerlist Top 30 Creative Architects 2023^[15]
• Excellence in Design Award, Columbia University GSAPP, New York
• Kinne Traveling Fellowship Award, Columbia University GSAPP, New York
• Fulbright Scholarship, 2006
• Academic Excellence Scholarship, UCSG

• The Mukaab & New Murabba, international Architecture Competition. 1st Prize/ Design Contract
• Royal Diriyah Equestrian and Polo Club, International Architecture Competition. 1st Prize/ Design Contract
• Super SkyScrapers International Design Competition 2013, Mention
• Spiretec Design Competition 2011, 1sr Prize. Design Contract^[16]
• Future Cities, Past, future 2009 Competition, Curator’s Selection
• Arquitectum London Floating Gallery 2008 Competition, Honor Mention
• Evolo Housing 2007 Competition, 1st Prize^[17]
• Evolo Skyscraper 2007 Competition, Special Mention^[18]

• Forbes Ecuador: "El ecuatoriano que construye sueños en Dubái"^[19] (Featured interview)
• "Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians", Joe Quirk & Patri Friedman ^[20] (Featured designs)
• PanStadia: “Stadia as Urban Catalysts”, Winter 2010/11 (Featured Article)

• Evolo Magazine, Fall 2009 issue (Featured competition winning proposal)

• Drawing: The Motive Force of Architecture, Sir Peter Cook 2008 (Featured designs)

• Evolo Book: Skyscrapers for the XXI Century2008 (Featured designs)

• Arquitectum London 2008: Adaptable Architecture Gallery Competition (Featured designs)

• SkyScraper 43, Archiworld. South Korea 2008 (Featured designs)

• L’ARCA, ItalyNo. 226, June 2007 (Featured designs)

• VIVIENDAS, Spain No. 58, December 2007 (Featured designs)

• Digital Diagram, Archiworld. South Korea 2007 (Featured designs)

• Future of Architecture Summit & Awards: Biophilic architecture in the age of AI, Dubai 2025 [1]
• Future of Architecture Summit & Awards: Are Architects becoming replaceable?, Dubai 2023 [2]
• Panelist, 3rd Cinemabuild Conference KSA, February 2021
• Hybrid Architectures, June 2020. Universidad Catolica Santiago de Guayaquil
• Feel Crafting: Human Centric Design, May 2020, Universidad San Sebastian, Chile
• Post Covid-19 Design May 2020, Universidad de Especialidades Espiritu Santo
• Feel Crafting: Human Centric Design May 2020, Sharjah University
• UAE-Programmatic Hybridization: The Search for a Bespoke Asian Stadia Model March 2017, University of the Philippines, Department of Architecture
• Programmatic Hybridization: The Search for a Bespoke Asian Stadia ModelFebruary 2017, National University of Singapore, Singapore
• Past Futures, Present Futures October 2012. Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York
• Eco Construction Symposium (Speaker and Workshop Tutor) September 2012. Universidad Catolica Santiago de Guayaquil and Holcim Ecuador
• Beijing International Design Triennial December 2011. Beijing, China
• Prediction: Saint Etienne International Design Biennale December 2010. Saint Etienne, France
• Imagining Recovery: Toward a Design Economy June 16th – 26th 2009. Berlage Institute, Rotterdam
• Future Cities, Past, Future April 2009. Collective Exhibition. D3 Gallery, New York
• Ideas for Coney Island. February 2009. Collective Exhibition. Municipal Art Society, NY
• Arquitectum London 2008: Adaptable Architecture Gallery September 2008. Winners Exhibition Architectural Association, London UK
• Empty Form May 2007. Collective Exhibition. Temple Hoyne Buell Center New York

Edward is married resides in the Middle East with his wife. His extended family lives in the United States and the United Kingdom