Damascus Dialogues II

[applied] Foreign Affairs collaborates with the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Damascus and the Damascus-based Reparametrize Foundation (as part of their ongoing project Recoding Post-War-Syria, Zamalka).  Students have been selected from each institution to participate in the lab last year. 

This term, the post-war situation of the eastern suburbs of Damascus continue to be our primary focus, using the neighborhood of Zamalka as a prototypical site for our investigations and, potentially, for an extended study over the coming years. The lab asks if spatial interventions at a small scale, strategically dispersed, can instigate community building.

Before engaging directly with the community in Zamalka, the lab focused on thematic investigations – first in Vienna, then in Damascus – which provided the team insight though analytical tools and methods of their own design. These methodologies were developed in pairs, forming the core of our cross-institutional collaboration – a dialogue bridging together different experiences in an attempt to understand complex spatial and social issues. Much of this exchange was determined by and adapted to the global realities of the current Covid-19 pandemic.

In this upcoming phase of the Damascus Dialogues lab, we will focus on collecting and processing the ideas produced in the previous semester with the aim to synthesize them. A field lab in Beirut, Lebanon will mark the culmination of the joint lab. It will also allow for a physical exchange between the Vienna- and Damascus-based team members to take place for the first time. Beirut, here seen as a logical middle ground between Austria and Syria, will also be where the previous investigations will be reflected on and shared with a wider audience, potentially leading into a next (design based) project phase in the format of a workshop.

[a]FA teaching by Baerbel Mueller and Gregorio Lubroth

 

Schedule:

March 2021 - July 2021

Upcoming ZOOM meetings between Vienna and Damascus dates tbc

July 2021 (10 – 25) field lab in Beirut, Lebanon 

Not open for new students