Muthana J. Al Bayaty was born in Baghdad in 1947. He studied at Ain Shams University in Cairo. After graduating in 1969 he practiced architecture in various places, including the esteemed Hisham Munir’s Architectural Office and Building Research Center. He continued his studies at Yale University earning his Master’s degree in Environmental Design in 1977. He then joined the department of architecture at Baghdad University as a teacher. He founded Bayaty Architects in Baghdad in 1978. In 1979 he joined the PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania, graduated in 1982, studied under the supervision of influential architects-thinkers like Joseph Rykwert and Cesar Pelli.

Afterwards he was back to Baghdad to manage Bayaty Architects, where he designed some prestigious projects like State Grand Mosque. In addition he was a prominent professor at the University of Baghdad. He taught several subjects like Design Studio and Theory of Design to undergraduate and graduate students. During his academic work in Baghdad he helped establish a new school of thought, as a local version of the universal phenomenological school of architecture. His scope of interest includes the hermeneutics and semiotics in architecture. He helped navigating through the existential theories of architecture. Introducing the deep philosophies of architects like Kahn, Le Corbusier, and several others.

He introduced the contemporary architectural debates, and discussions of concepts like style, traditionalism, innovation, formal autonomy, place, and the very act of building itself. He inspired insights into the basic notion of architectural design, emphasized ideas like interpreting the architectural joint as the locality where theory and practice meet, where architecture can be deciphered.

Between 1996 and 1997 he moved to Jordan and was a member of the faculty of architecture at the University of Applied Sciences in Amman, where he was able to explore concepts of architecture in a different academic setting.

In 1997 he established his own practice Bayaty Architects (BA) in Abu Dhabi and is still heading of this establishment. From that time BA continued to grow as one of the most esteemed architectural offices in the UAE. He has about 47 years of professional experience in architectural design and management. Throughout his career, he combined this extensive theoretical knowledge with practical experience to design and a wide range of projects, including residential developments and many private villas, commercial mixed-use developments, educational/academic buildings industrial buildings, and historic rehabilitation/preservation.