Aamena Desai

Aamena is an experienced urban designer, people leader and project manager with 18 years of experience working in architecture, urban design, master-planning and advisory teams.

She has led large and often dispersed multi-disciplinary teams in delivering complex projects focused on a variety of built environment themes.

Aamena started her career in 2007 as an architect, working mainly on public facilities and educational buildings at ASM Metacity in Durban and then award winning architectural practice LMDSA in Cape Town, South Africa, while completing her masters in Urban Design at the University of Cape Town.

In 2015, Aamena joined Arup’s master planning team in Johannesburg as an Urban Designer.  She contributed to and later led, a variety of master planning and urban design projects at Arup from 2015-2019.  From 2020-2024 Aamena led Arup’s Cities teams across Sub- Saharan Africa, winning and working on industrial development masterplans, development frameworks, visioning exercises, public sector advisory projects, mobility plans and infrastructure development programs.

In 2025, Aamena joined Buro Happolds Urban Strategies Middle East team, to lead the framework plan workstream for the Abu Dhabi long term strategic plan. After completing this project, she relocated to Dubai where she currently works on planning and advisory projects across the UAE and KSA and leads the teams work winning activities.

Aamena is an integrator and excels at bringing talented people together to understand project objectives, and development challenges, and develop fit to purpose solutions that meet the needs of clients and communities.

At Buro Happold she has recently been appointed as the Global co-lead of BH’s C:Lab program which is the primary investment instrument for people development at BuroHappold. Aamena has also worked part-time as an academic, developing and delivering the Urban Design practice course at Wits University in the Urban Design masters program from 2020-2024, and recently has been involved in the Urban Design studio at the University of Birmingham, Dubai.

She has also spoken extensively on a variety of topics and presented projects at conferences, symposiums and workshops across Africa.