Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has appointed Vahan Misakyan as Deputy Chairman of the Urban Development Committee, his office reported Monday.

Misakyan, 40, holds an architecture qualification from Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction and two master’s degrees from Columbia University in New York — one in Advanced Architectural Design and another in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices.

His international professional experience includes working as an architect at Studio MDA in New York, serving as a visiting and associate lecturer at Columbia University, and holding the Cass Gilbert Professorship in Architecture at the University of Minnesota, where he taught urban planning, architectural design and theory. Since returning to Armenia, he has pursued independent architectural and research work, including projects through AMP Studio, whose urban revitalization proposal for Yerevan’s Kond district was selected as a winner in both the 2022 and 2024 rounds of the competition. He also founded the X-Commons platform and led research at the Surveillant City Laboratory, focusing on the digital, surveillance and infrastructural evolution of urban environments.