Yasmine Abbas
yaz [at] mit [dot] alum [dot] edu
Instagram @panurban

French architect, artist, researcher and educator Yasmine Abbas explores how neo-nomadism affects the practice of design and the experience of place. She is the author of Le Néo-nomadisme: Mobilités, partage, transformations identitaires et urbaines (FYP, 2011). Her varied art and design engagements are vehicles to interrogate how an increasingly mobile, cosmopolitan, and connected population can meaningfully inhabit a world in flux. Her work has been published as chapters in edited books: Ecologies du Smartphone (Le Bord de l’Eau, 2021), The Ghosts of Transparency: Shadows Cast and Shadows Cast Out(Birkhaüser, 2019), Technologies numériques du soi et (co-)constructions identitaires, (l’Harmattan, 2009), and in journals, Volume, MONU, AA Files, New Geographies, and Architectural Design. 

With Dk Osseo-Asare, Abbas co-founded the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform project, or AMP, as a hybrid design and research collaboration between their practices, Panurban and LowDO. The work has received numerous awards, the 2017 Social Economic and Environmental Design (SEED) Award and the 2020 Le Monde Cities Urban Innovation Award – Citizen Engagement Prize. AMP has been exhibited internationally, at the 2017 Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism, and as commissioned installations for the Center for Art and Media – ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (Exhibition: Digital Imaginaries: Africas in Production, 2018), the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Switzerland (Exhibition: Repair Revolution! 2023) and the Biennale Architettura 2023: The Laboratory of the Future, Venice, Italy.

Her multicultural background and international work experience in Africa and the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and North America have informed her creative approach to research and teaching, for which she received an Innovator Award from the Center for Pedagogy in Art and Design at Penn State (2018). Prior to joining Penn State where she directs the Immersive Environments Lab, Yasmine held positions as Chair of Design Management at Paris College of Art, as Module Lead (Digital Culture) at the Ecole des Ponts Paris-Tech and as Professeur Associé at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris, France. She holds a Doctor of Design from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a Master of Science in Architecture Studies from MIT.

Education

Harvard Graduate School of Design
Doctor of Design 
2006

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Master of Sciences in Architecture Studies
2001

Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Paris-Val-de-Marne
Architect Diplômé Par le Gouvernement [ with Félicitations ]
1997

Solo Shows

2025 
Exhibition
Date
Location

Group Shows

2025 
The Perimeter of Architecture: Amid the Elements
Biennale Architettura: Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective
May 10 – November 23
Electa Book Pavilion, Giardini, Venice, Italy

2024 
XRe_Cognition
April 9 – 10
Immersive Environments Lab, Penn State, USA

2023 
Dangerous Liaisons
Biennale Architettura: The Laboratory of the Future 
May 20 – November 26
Arsenale, Venice, Italy

2023
Design for the Common Good
October 4 – 19
Artus Contemporary Art Studio, Budapest, Hungary

2023
Repair Revolution!
March 31 – October 15
Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, Switzerland

2022
Design for the Common Good
January 14 – March 19
Center for Visual Art, Metropolitan State University of Denver, USA

2021
Driving the Human
October 12 – 18
Radialsystem, Berlin, Germany

2021
UFA, Université des Futurs Africains
April 9 – August 29
Lieu Unique, Nantes, France

2019
On/Of Paper
December 2 – March 6, 2020
Willard Rouse Gallery, Penn State, USA

2019
Plug-In, Turn On
February 7 – March 31
Hub-Robeson Gallery, Penn State, USA

2018
Digital Imaginaries: Africas in Production
November 17 – March 17, 2019
ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany

2018
Afropixel #6: Non-Aligned Utopias
26 Feb – 30 May
Kër Thiossane, Dakar, Senegal

2017
Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism: Production City
September 1 – November 5
Sewoon Sangga, Seoul, Korea

Press

‘A Agbogbloshie, une plate-forme collaborative pour promouvoir le up-recycling’
Le Monde Cities
2020

‘Sound, light and space exhibition coming to the HUB-Robeson Gallery’
Penn State News
2019

‘Bricolage... or the impossibility of pollution’ 
e-flux
2018

‘AMP creates mobile workshops for world's largest e-waste dump’
DEZEEN
2016

‘In search of the neo-nomad: is a new breed of wireless worker emerging?’
BBC News
2007

‘Quand les mobilités changent nos vies’ 
Sud Ouest 
2005