El Hadi is an associate professor of architecture and the director of the master of urban design at the University of Michigan. He is founding partner of the practice DESIGN EARTH with Rania Ghosn. His research investigates aesthetic forms of environmental engagement to visualize how urban systems transform the Earth. DESIGN EARTH has exhibited widely in venues such as the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Sharjah Biennial, the Times Museum in Guangzhou, the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon. The work of DESIGN EARTH has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art. It has been awarded prizes internationally, including the Architectural League of New York’s Prize for Young Architects + Designers, Jacques Rougerie Foundation’s First Prize, and Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Faculty Design Awards. El Hadi is co-author of Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment (New York: Actar, 2018) and Geographies of Trash (New York: Actar, 2015). He is founding editor of New Geographies and editor-in-chief of NG 4: Scales of the Earth (Harvard GSD, 2010). His recent writings have been published in the Journal of Architectural Education, the Avery Review, Thresholds, Topos, Domus, Abitare, Pidgin, ARQ Magazine, Volume, Harvard Design Magazine, MONU, and San Rocco.
El Hadi holds a Doctorate of Design from Harvard University, a Master of Architecture from Cornell University, and a Bachelor of Architecture from La Cambre in Brussels.