It is believed that he fell from the roof of the Abu Sanaa hotel in Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq, into the car park below where he was found in what appeared to be an accident unconnected with any military activity.
Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, partners of the Tokyo-based design firm SANAA, were selected as the lead architects in EPFL's international competition of December 2004.
Architects who previously worked for his office include Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA), Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham (KDa), Katsuya Fukushima, Makoto Yokomizo, and Akihisa Hirata.
Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din was born on Friday 18 June 1869 in Sanaa into the Hamidaddin branch of the al-Qasimi dynasty who ruled most of Yemen proper and South Saudi Arabia today for over 900 years.