Mamoun Fahham: So the Future Is Not Built upon the Body of a Place

Knowing that an elegant plan can hide an error the size of a life, an architect places the human being on the table before the table becomes a city, and reads the career of the planner Mamoun Fahham from Alexandria University to the Beaux-Arts and the Sorbonne in Paris, where he studied the social sciences of urbanism. In New Dummar, the suburb of Al-Sham Al-Jadida whose planning office he headed, the housing units turn into faces: a child looking for a friend, a mother who wants to see the path from her window, a tired man who needs the way home to be easy. Beside the Euphrates, the plan for Raqqa and the rehabilitation of its city wall raise the question of how to give a city tomorrow without stripping away its yesterday, while a hotel in Bosra, Al-Zahrawi Hospital and student housing for Damascus and Tishreen universities show a wall that shelters sleep, holds pain or gives learning a quiet night. The architect Bassem Barghouti's memory of learning construction details in his office leads to the lesson that a dream needs a joint and that beauty may depend on a millimeter. The book ends with environment, heritage and Syria's recovery, as a tree on the plan asks for water, a neighborhood asks for a school, and a future asks where those who cannot afford it will live.