Hello. My name is Marwah Sabon and I am an architect. I was born and raised in Homs City, a city in the western center of Syria, and I've always lived there. After six years of war, Homs is now a semi-ruinous city. My family and I were so lucky that our house is still in place. Although we were imprisoned at home for two years. It was full of demonstrations, clashes, bombers and snipers. My wife and I had an architecture studio in the main square of the Old Town neighborhood. Now it's gone, like the rest of the old city neighborhood. Half of the other neighborhoods in the city are now ruined. Since the ceasefire of late 2015, most parts of the city are more or less quiet. The economy is completely gone and people are still in war. The chairs in the old town were now underneath a canopy in the middle of the street. Under our apartment there is a carpenter, a bakery, a butcher, a printing house, workshops and so on. I started teaching part-time. And with my husband, how many jobs together, we opened a small bookstore. The rest of the people, all sorts of things to live.
Marwa Architecture Syria
Of course, when I look at the city, I ask myself: What led to this meaningless war? In
most of Syria, people were tolerant of each other, were accustomed to
diversity throughout history, with a wide range of beliefs, races,
identities, traditions, and food and goods. How
was my country, a country in which everyone lived in harmony, and
solved their differences in peace, how did this country degenerate into
civil war, violence and displacement, and an unprecedented ethnic
hatred? Many factors led to this war - social, political, and economic. Each played their own role. But
I believe that there is a key reason missing, which is very important
for its analysis, because it is extremely affecting, until we are sure
that this will not happen again. And that is because of architecture.
