Yostina Yacoub

Looking forward: Yostina Yacoub

School/College: Tyler School of Art and Architecture
Degree: MArch, architecture, 2024
Hometown: Cairo, Egypt
Current position: Research and partnerships associate
Current employer: VAES.ai

While visiting her grandparents in Luxor, Egypt, as a child, Yostina Yacoub, TYL ’24, found herself just a 10-minute walk from temples thousands of years old. Admiring their beauty and longevity, Yostina felt inspired to one day create structures that would live up to the rich architectural legacy of her home country.

A budding talent. Yostina was always a top-tier student and excelled through an undergraduate degree in architectural engineering from The British University in Egypt with a dual degree from London South Bank University in the United Kingdom. Working afterward as a lead landscape architect for an Egyptian firm, Yostina lead the designs of landscaping at the country’s Al Ittihadiya presidential palace, the Canadian and Singaporean embassies, and the Singaporean ambassador’s private residence. Simultaneously working as a teaching assistant at The British University in Egypt, Yostina was part of a team that won 4th place in the international 2021 Young Architects Competition award for their design of a COVID-safe medical facility.

“I’m always looking back at the old ways we built things that have survived for thousands of years. I try to take those lessons and reinterpret them in ways that make sense for today’s world.”

—Yostina Yacoub
Research and partnerships associate

Yostina Yacoub sitting on steps for a photo.

Ticket to Temple. Yostina applied for and received a prestigious international Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United States, and Tyler caught her eye for its reputation in the field and location in a major city, offering familiarity to those she grew up in.

Once on North Broad, Yostina benefited most from the open-minded educational philosophies of the professors at Tyler, whom she says encouraged students to get creative and take multidisciplinary approaches. Yostina leaned in and delivered an unconventional thesis, exploring how architectural themes from ancient Coptic traditions in Egypt could be reinterpreted within the American landscape.

Yostina found her calling in building a more sustainable future, while remaining enamored with the past. Early in her career she helped design a hydrophilic unit that can extract water from the humidity in the atmosphere to help address water scarcity. And in her current role as a researcher with Dubai-based startup VAES.ai, Yostina is helping to refine an artificial intelligence software that can maximize environmentally friendly design in the construction industry.