Arwa Qalalwa


Master of Architecture with an Emphasis in Interior Architecture

Arwa Qalalwa is a Palestinian Architect and Designer who explores relationships between objects, users, and space and the set of interactions that collide in the “in-between.” She got her BArch degree from Birzeit University in Palestine, where she was awarded for excellence in her thesis and has received the Fulbright scholarship award in 2020. Arwa completed her Master of Architecture IA in 2022 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Arwa has also won the second prize for the “Palestine Land society competition 2018” hosted in London for reconstructing destroyed Palestinian villages in 1948. After that, she spanned her experiences by participating in workshops in Italy, Norway, Jordan, Dubai, and the USA.

In 2020 Arwa founded ARQA Design Studio with a vision of change. Through her practice, Arwa creates experiences of architectural conditions that aim to challenge the sociopolitical-colonialist structures while exploring the spatial conditions that intersect within these layers.