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From a model of peace to a model of conflict: The effect of architectural modernization on the Syrian urban and social make-up

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2019

Marwa Al-Sabouni
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Abstract

From a land called the “Cradle of Civilizations” to one that is now described as “apocalyptic” and “one of the most dangerous places on Earth”, Syria may have no more critical moment than the current crisis to reflect on what is taking it down this terrifyingly dark path. We resort to history in order to decipher the mysteries of the present, and there is no more honest and direct history than that of the built environment: a concrete object that tells the narratives not only of the winners, the wealthy and the powerful, but also of those who were brushed aside, cut apart and walked over.

This Opinion Note argues that reversing the process which led to the loss of home and the loss of urban fabric is the foundation of reclaiming these as essential elements of recovery after war and destruction. It examines four areas of transformation where modern urban planning and architecture have left their marks on the Levantine city, to give a clearer understanding of the role of architecture and where to begin in the rebuilding.

Keywords

urban planningurban fabricsocial fabricarchitecturetraditionalmodernSyriaconflictwarbeautyhome
Type
The way forward
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 99 , Issue 906: Conflict in Syria , December 2017 , pp. 1019 - 1036
Copyright
Copyright © icrc 2019 

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References

1 Al-Sabouni, Marwa, The Battle for Home, Thames & Hudson, London, 2016Google Scholar.

2 Duraid Durgham, “The Economic and Social Dimensions of the Housing Problem”, lecture, Economic Science Association, Damascus, 2001, available at: www.mafhoum.com/syr/articles_01/dergham/dergham.htm (all internet references were accessed in January 2019).

3 Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Vintage Books Edition, Random House, New York, 1992 (first published 1961), p. 270Google Scholar.

4 “From beginning to end, from Howard and Burnham to the latest amendment on urban-renewal law, the entire connection is irrelevant to the workings of cities. Unstudied, unrespected, cities have served as sacrificial victims.” Ibid., p. 25.

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6 Scruton, Roger, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011, p. 3Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., p. 34.

8 R. Scruton, above note 5, p. 236. “The sense of the appropriate exists as an embodiment of moral thought, as a perception in the immediate here and now, of aims and values that lie buried in distant and barely accessible regions of existence. In a very real sense, the cultivation of ‘visual decorum’ – is part of a process of bringing order to the otherwise nebulous choices of individual life.” Ibid., p. 230.

9 Alexander, Christopher, The Timeless Way of Building, Oxford University Press, New York, 1979, p. 120Google Scholar: “The situation is self-destroying, not only because it will change as soon as the law which upholds it disappears, but also in the more subtle sense that it is continuously creating just those inner conflicts, just those reservoirs of stress I spoke of earlier which will, unsatisfied, soon well up like a gigantic boil and leak out in some other form of destruction or refusal to cooperate with the situation.”

10 De Botton, Alain, The Architecture of Happiness, Penguin Books, London, 2007, p. 25Google Scholar: “[A]rchitecture asks us to imagine that happiness might often have an unostentatious, unheroic character to it, that it might be found in a run of old floorboards or in a wash of morning light over a plaster wall – in undramatic, frangible scenes of beauty that move us because we are aware of the darker backdrop against which they are set.”

11 For further information on the subject, see M. Al-Sabouni, above note 1.

12 Burke, Edmund., A Philosophical Inquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015 (originally published in 1757), p. 19Google Scholar.

13 Yasmina El Chami, Beirut: From Multipli-City to Corporate City in Beirut Central District, Architectural Association School of Architecture, 26 April 2012, available at: http://projectivecities.aaschool.ac.uk/portfolio/yasmina-el-chami-from-multipli-city-to-corporate-city/.

14 Stockhammer, Daniel and Wild, Nicola, The French Mandate City: A Footprint in Damascus, ETH Studio Basel Contemporary City Institute, Middle East Studio, 2009Google Scholar.

15 Ecochard's plan and the French-led modernization are reminiscent of similar processes in Beirut or Istanbul. For the latter, see, inter alia, Gül, Murat, Emergence of Modern Istanbul: Transformation and Modernisation of a City, Vol. 83, I. B. Tauris, London, 2009Google Scholar; King, Charles, Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul, W. W. Norton, New York, 2014Google Scholar; Bilsel, Cânâ and Zelef, Halûk, “Mega Events in Istanbul from Henri Prost's Master Plan of 1937 to the Twenty-First-Century Olympic Bids”, Planning Perspectives, Vol. 26, No. 4, 2011CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See the Marotta City website, available at: http://marotacity.sy/.