Rifat Chadijri was born in 1926 in Baghdad, Iraq. He is the founder of the architectural firm Iraq Consult of which he was president of from 1952-1978, and a major figure in one of the most important architectural schools in the Arab world, The Baghdad School of Architecture as well as a published author.

Chadirji is renowned for his views on rejecting the use of the forms of the past and devising a new form that can be translated into new and contemporary urban aesthetic — one that would guide the articulations of a genuinely modern Iraqi townscape in the latter part of the 20th century.

Since 1983, he dedicated himself to his writings, which include Al Ukhaidar and the Crystal Palace (1991), A Dialogue on the Structure of Art and Architecture (1995), Internationalised Tradition in Architecture and Regenerative approaches to mosque design-competition to State Mosque, Baghdad. He has also been published in several Arabic periodicals.

He is also a visiting fellow at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the American Institute of Architects, and a recipient of the Chairman’s Award of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. He is currently chairman of Chadirji Research Centre, where he conducts his research work.