construction maison moderne bbc

hi. my name is marwa,and i'm an architect. i was born and raised in homs, a city in the centralwestern part of syria, and i've always lived here. after six years of war, homs is now a half-destroyed city. my family and i were lucky;our place is still standing. although for two years,we were like prisoners at home. outside there were demonstrationsand battles and bombings and snipers.

my husband and i used to runan architecture studio in the old town main square. it's gone, as is mostof the old town itself. half of the city's other neighborhoods are now rubble. since the ceasefire in late 2015, large parts of homshave been more or less quiet. the economy is completely broken,and people are still fighting. the merchants who had stallsin the old city market

now trade out of sheds on the streets. under our apartment, there is a carpenter, sweetshops, a butcher, a printing house,workshops, among many more. i have started teaching part-time, and with my husband,who juggles several jobs, we've opened a small bookshop. other people do all sortsof jobs to get by. when i look at my destroyed city,of course, i ask myself: what has led to this senseless war?

syria was largely a place of tolerance, historically accustomed to variety, accommodating a wide rangeof beliefs, origins, customs, goods, food. how did my country -- a country with communitiesliving harmoniously together and comfortable in discussingtheir differences -- how did it degenerate into civil war,violence, displacement and unprecedented sectarian hatred?

there were many reasonsthat had led to the war -- social, political and economic. they all have played their role. but i believe there is one key reasonthat has been overlooked and which is important to analyze, because from it will largely depend whether we can make surethat this doesn't happen again. and that reason is architecture. architecture in my countryhas played an important role

in creating, directing and amplifyingconflict between warring factions, and this is probably truefor other countries as well. there is a sure correspondencebetween the architecture of a place and the character of the communitythat has settled there. architecture plays a key rolein whether a community crumbles or comes together. syrian society has long livedthe coexistence of different traditions and backgrounds. syrians have experiencedthe prosperity of open trade

and sustainable communities. they have enjoyed the true meaningof belonging to a place, and that was reflectedin their built environment, in the mosques and churchesbuilt back-to-back, in the interwoven souks and public venues, and the proportions and sizes basedon principles of humanity and harmony. this architecture of mixitycan still be read in the remains. the old islamic city in syriawas built over a multilayered past, integrating with itand embracing its spirit.

so did its communities. people lived and worked with each other in a place that gave thema sense of belonging and made them feel at home. they shared a remarkablyunified existence. but over the last century, gradually this delicate balanceof these places has been interfered with; first, by the urban plannersof the colonial period, when the french wententhusiastically about,

transforming what they sawas the un-modern syrian cities. they blew up city streetsand relocated monuments. they called them improvements, and they were the beginningof a long, slow unraveling. the traditional urbanismand architecture of our cities assured identity and belongingnot by separation, but by intertwining. but over time, the ancient becameworthless, and the new, coveted. the harmony of the built environmentand social environment

got trampled overby elements of modernity -- brutal, unfinished concrete blocks, neglect, aesthetic devastation, divisive urbanism that zonedcommunities by class, creed or affluence. and the same was happeningto the community. as the shape of the builtenvironment changed, so the lifestyles and senseof belonging of the communities also started changing. from a registerof togetherness, of belonging,

architecture becamea way of differentiation, and communities started drifting apart from the very fabricthat used to unite them, and from the soul of the place that usedto represent their common existence. while many reasons had ledto the syrian war, we shouldn't underestimatethe way in which, by contributing to the lossof identity and self-respect, urban zoning and misguided,inhumane architecture have nurtured sectariandivisions and hatred.

over time, the united cityhas morphed into a city center with ghettos along its circumference. and in turn, the coherent communitiesbecame distinct social groups, alienated from each otherand alienated from the place. from my point of view, losing the sense of belonging to a place and a sense of sharing itwith someone else has made it a lot easier to destroy. the clear example can be seenin the informal housing system,

which used to host, before the war,over 40 percent of the population. yes, prior to the war,almost half of the syrian population lived in slums, peripheral areaswithout proper infrastructure, made of endless rows of bare block boxes containing people, people who mostly belongedto the same group, whether based on religion,class, origin or all of the above. this ghettoized urbanismproved to be a tangible precursor of war.

conflict is much easierbetween pre-categorized areas -- where the "others" live. the ties that usedto bind the city together -- whether they were social,through coherent building, or economic, through trade in the souk, or religious, throughthe coexistent presence -- were all lost in the misguidedand visionless modernization of the built environment. allow me an aside.

when i read about heterogeneous urbanismin other parts of the world, involving ethnic neighborhoodsin british cities or around paris or brussels, i recognize the beginningof the kind of instability we have witnessedso disastrously here in syria. we have severely destroyed cities, such as homs, aleppo,daraa and many others, and almost half of the populationof the country is now displaced. hopefully, the war will end,

and the question that,as an architect, i have to ask, is: how do we rebuild? what are the principlesthat we should adopt in order to avoid repeatingthe same mistakes? from my point of view, the main focusshould be on creating places that make their people feel they belong. architecture and planningneed to recapture some of the traditional valuesthat did just that, creating the conditionsfor coexistence and peace,

values of beautythat don't exhibit ostentation, but rather, approachability and ease, moral values that promotegenerosity and acceptance, architecture that is for everyoneto enjoy, not just for the elite, just as used to be in the shadowed alleysof the old islamic city, mixed designs that encouragea sense of community. there is a neighborhood here in homsthat's called baba amr that has been fully destroyed. almost two years ago,i introduced this design

into a un-habitat competitionfor rebuilding it. the idea was to create an urban fabricinspired by a tree, capable of growingand spreading organically, echoing the traditional bridgehanging over the old alleys, and incorporating apartments,private courtyards, shops, workshops, places for parkingand playing and leisure, trees and shaded areas. it's far from perfect, obviously. i drew it during the few hoursof electricity we get.

and there are many possible waysto express belonging and community through architecture. but compare it with the freestanding,disconnected blocks proposed by the official projectfor rebuilding baba amr. architecture is not the axisaround which all human life rotates, but it has the power to suggestand even direct human activity. in that sense, settlement,identity and social integration are all the producer and productof effective urbanism. the coherent urbanismof the old islamic city

and of many old europeantowns, for instance, promote integration, while rows of soulless housingor tower blocks, even when they are luxurious, tend to promote isolation and "otherness." even simple things like shaded places or fruit plantsor drinking water inside the city can make a differencein how people feel towards the place, and whether they consider ita generous place that gives,

a place that's worth keeping,contributing to, or whether they see itas an alienating place, full of seeds of anger. in order for a place to give,its architecture should be giving, too. our built environment matters. the fabric of our cities is reflectedin the fabric of our souls. and whether in the shapeof informal concrete slums or broken social housing or trampled old towns

or forests of skyscrapers, the contemporary urban archetypes that have emergedall across the middle east have been one cause of the alienationand fragmentation of our communities. we can learn from this. we can learn how to rebuildin another way, how to create an architecturethat doesn't contribute only to the practical and economicaspects of people's lives, but also to their social, spiritualand psychological needs.

those needs were totally overlookedin the syrian cities before the war. we need to create againcities that are shared by the communities that inhabit them. if we do so, people will not feel the need to seek identities opposedto the other identities all around, because they will all feel at home. thank you for listening.