Dr. Naziaty Binti Mohd Yaacob

Biography

Naziaty Mohd Yaacob was born in Bentong, Pahang, 54 years ago.  Naziaty Mohd Yaacob was trained in Malaysia and England as an architect. She is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Architecture, Universiti Malaya, where she worked since 1997.  Naziaty obtained her doctorate in 2009 from the University of Salford.  Her PhD thesis is titled Accessibility to Historic and Listed Public Buildings: Development Control Processes in England and Wales. She taught architectural design, theory and philosophy, architectural research, history of western architecture, universal design and design theory. She is the head of two research programs worth almost a quarter of a million ringgit in the first year alone. One is entitled: Learning from the Architectural Design Studio and the other is a Grand Challenge collaboration with Kuala Lumpur City Hall entitled: Universal Design and Inclusive Society for Kuala Lumpur Built Enviornment, awarded in 2014.   Apart from her academic role, she is well-known amongst disability activists in Malaysia as she became involved in advocacy work since 1998.  Her contributions to disability & accessibility advocacy in Malaysia are tremendous. She is one of the national council members for the Persons With Disability Act 2008 for the first two terms, 2008-2012 and expert reference in Accessibility and Universal Design. She also devotes her time and energy in providing advice, consultations, fieldwork and research on access audits of public and private buildings and sites.  Naziaty shares her wealth of knowledge and experience via her letters, blogs and articles. She was awarded a special award for her academic work at the National Day for Disabled Persons celebration in 2014. In 2016, she founded ZasVe which is a business pod that will be applying to be a start-up company on universal design products under UM Innovations Sdn. Bhd.. The revenue comes from access audit and building design appraisals. She hopes to get the start-up running end of 2016.

Research Interest

Design Studio Practice (Sustainable Design, Ecological Design, Sustainable Design in Education and Practice) Design for Disables (Accessible Design, Inclusive Design, Universal Design, Disability) History and Philosophy of Sciences and Technology (Architecture Theory and Philosophy) Tertiary Education (Architectural Education, Experiential Learning, Studio-based Learning)