محسن صلاح الدين يوسف

"Every Place has a true personality, a personality too much asleep it may be, but which it is the task of the planner - as master artist – to awaken. And only he can do this, the one who is in love and feel at home with his subject, the love in which high intuition supplements knowledge, and arouses his fullest intensity of expression" Patrick Geddes . . . We must plan for the future because people who stay in the present will remain in the past, Abraham Lincoln _____ A city is more than a place in space; it is a drama in time, Patrick Geddes _____ Every culture has its characteristic drama, the stage on which this drama is in acted, with the most skilled actors and a full supporting company and specially designed scenery, is the city, Lewis Mumford_____ Automobiles need quantity and pedestrians need quality. - Dan Burden_____ Cars are happiest when there are no other cars around. People are happiest when there are other people around. - Dan Burden_____ It is not the strongest of the species that survive, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. - Charles Darwin_____ On the failure of planning as process: when the job seems too difficult, the tool is probably wrong. - Andres Duany_____ The street, which is the public realm of America, is now a barrier to community life. - Andres Duany_____ The more parking space, the less sense of place- Jane Holtz Kay_____ Whatever a traffic engineer tells you to do, do the opposite and you'll improve your community. - Fred Kent_____ Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf. - Lewis Mumford_____ Infill development is publicly cheap but privately expensive, while sprawl is publicly expensive but privately cheap. - James Nicholas_____ Cities are for people, they are not traffic corridors. John Norquist_____ A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. - George S. Patton_____ A city can be friendly to people or it can be friendly to cars, but it can't be both. – Enrique Penalosa______ 50 years ago, city planning practices and codes moved from being community unifiers to suburban dividers. - Tom Walsh______ For the first time in human history, people are systematically building meaningless places. - E.V. Walter ______ Design is in everything we make, but it's also between those things. It's a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy. ERIK ADIGARD _____ Let each person exercise the art they know best. ARISTOPHENES ______ If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts. But if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties. FRANCIS BACON _____ Wondering is the key to progress. GERALD HORTON BATH_____ Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination. DANIEL BELL _____ Graphics is the visual means of resolving logical problems. BERTIN_____ To say that something is designed means it has intentions that go beyond its function. Otherwise it's just planning. AYSE BIRSEL _____ Art is passion practiced with great discipline. Science is discipline practiced with great passion. DR. KEITH BLACK_____ The opposite of every great idea is another great idea. NIELS BOHR _____ Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood. DANIEL BURNHAM _____ When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. E. JEFFEREY CONKLIN & WILLIAM WEIL _____ Form follows function straight to hell. ALAN COOPER_____ Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them. ALBERT EINSTEIN_____ We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. ALBERT EINSTEIN _____ Form follows emotion. HARTMUT ESSLINGER_____ If design isn't profitable, then it's art. HENRIK FISKER _____ Form follows finances instead of function. IRA FLATOW_____ Write things worth reading, or do the things worth the writing. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN_____ Form follows function. HORATIO GREENOUGH (popularized by LOUIS SULLIVAN) _____ Success has many fathers. JOHN F. KENNEDY_____ A design isn't finished until somebody is using it. BRENDA LAUREL _____ Ugliness does not sell. RAYMOND LOEWY_____ Simplicity of device is always the sign of the master, whether in science or in art. RICHARD C. MACLAURIN______ Design is intelligence made visible. DON NEWGREN_____ A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist. LOUIS NIZER ______ Attractive things work better. DONALD NORMAN _____ Style impresses, true beauty expresses. CHRIS PACIONE _____ The only important thing about design is how it relates to people. VICTOR PAPANEK _____ Chance favors the prepared mind. LOUIS PASTEUR _____ Form follows failure. HENRY PETROSKI ______ Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. PABLO PICASSO _____ Less is more. LUDWIG MIES van der ROHE_____ The design process, at its best, integrates the aspirations of art, science, and culture. JEFF SMITH _____ Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. JONATHAN SWIFT _____ Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. ALBERT von SZENT-GYORGY______ Beauty is the result of clarity and system and not of optical illusion. HENRY van de VELDE _____ Less is a bore. ROBERT VENTURI _____ Common sense is not so common. VOLTAIRE _____ Planning is everything; plans are nothing. HELMUTH von MOLTKE _____ Home is no longer a location, home is a concept. I want the feelings of home wherever I am. WATTS WACKER_____ Imagination is imitative—the real innovation lies in criticism. OSCAR WILDE _____ I never design a building before I've seen the site and met the people who will be using it. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT ______ Less is more only where more is no good. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT _____    Wiki Philosophy                                                                       فلسفة إسلامية

Teaching Philosophy I treat teaching as an opportunity to inspire and empower. As a planning and urban design teacher, it is my goal to enhance student learning as a transformative experience. Ideally, I want students to feel personally changed by their participation in my courses. It is my expectation that students not only learn from me and from each other, but that I learn from them as well. The connection and energy established between my students and me is a powerful teaching technique that I develop in creating an optimal learning experience. By sharing with them my teaching objectives, students know that I am invested in them. Besides my role as the instructor or design coach is not only a source of knowledge, but also a source of spiritual support and an avenue for other resources. Students always expect that I am approachable, available to answer questions, and genuinely invested in their academic success. Finally I summarize my teaching philosophy in this statement:   "My teaching Philosophy is to teach all what I learned and to learn from all what I am teaching". Mohsen Salah Eldin Youssef

Personal Philosophy

My personal philosophy was inspired by the essential principle in Islam, which is the holly and absolute oneness of Allah, and the absolute duality of creatures, ideas and everything else. The duality concept was known in ancient Chinese culture, and appeared  in Hegel's work, whose philosophy of idealism, was based on the conception of logic in which conflicts and contradictions are regarded as necessary elements of truth, and truth is regarded as a sustainable process rather than a fixed state of things. This idea explains the principle of absolute existence for any opposing forces in every creature and idea in the universe. And that the governing rule of it is rhythm. So once you identify the opposing forces in any debate, you can better evaluate the issue and establish your own position and attitude.  Mohsen Salah Eldin Youssef