He uses his vocabulary of forms in urban settings to narrate stories and evoke collective memory with a very particular whimsical, often absurdist approach; seeking to 'create moments of dreams' in different cities of the world.

He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Beirut in 1982, at the height of the Lebanese civil war, and left the same year to study in Japan on a Monbusho scholarship.

At the University of Tokyo he developed an interest in Japanese philosophy of space, which he studied under Hiroshi Hara, and was also taught by Fumihiko Maki and Tadao Ando.

Nadim Karam taught at the Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo in 1992 with Riichi Miyake and then returned to Beirut to create his experimental group, Atelier Hapsitus.

The post-civil war 1997–2000 itinerant urban art project he created for central Beirut was one of five worldwide selected by the Van Alen Institute[4] in New York in 2002 to highlight the role they played in the rejuvenation of city life and morale after a disaster.