Analysis for the Urban Design Project in the Old City, Damascus, Syria

PAR >planning and building in Extra-European regions< at the TU Darmstadt, Germany, is trying to sensitise the students to an integral urban design in foreign cultures. The fact of designing in a foreign, not so familiar culture helps abstracting the design process and provokes the students to follow their own designing believs. They have to adapt to new rules - may they be based on geography, culture, climate, materials, ... Abstraction and common sense lead to an explicate attitude to be discussed with the locals in order to avoid an urban designing mainly based on traditional prejudices. In the winter term 08/09 we focused on the old city of Damascus, which is part of the UNESCO world heritage since 1979. Since the 90s investments have led to a Walt Disney for tourists. The students now had to propose an urban design which prevents the old city from becoming a dead museum and makes it a vivid district of the city. In terms of urbanism they had to combine housing with the actual artistic and cultural movement in Damascus. Inspired by Shadi Ghadirian series ‚like every day‘ we named it ‚a new brand for the old town‘. The results of the urban design studio are presented in form of videos on the website www.damascus.par-darmstadt.de. This volume 'analysis' is an approach to the Arab culture, Syria and Damascus in forms of maps, graphical analysis and visualisations.