Architect, Iraq The driving force behind Rifat Chadirji’s work has been his attempt to reconcile contemporary social needs with new technology. His search for a regional modernism found expression in cement-concrete buildings and in his plans for Baghdad. In the Iraq of the 1950s, a flowering of the arts included intensive discussions among architects, artists, writers, and intellectuals about the need for appropriate artistic expressions, influenced by both European ideas and local traditions. The architects Wilson and Mason, who practiced in Iraq in the 1940s and whose buildings interpreted local architecture employing indigenous master masons, also shaped Chadirji’s ideas about regionalism. This approach stagnated somewhat after World War II, when new technologies that bypassed the contribution of the indigenous building industry were introduced. Architects such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Frank Lloyd Wright visited Iraq in the 1960s, encouraging the local Iraq...