Marwa Al-Sabouni (SY) is an award-winning architect, urban thinker, and author based in Syria. Her work explores the intersections of sociology, psychology, context, and aesthetics to highlight architecture’s role as a society-making tool.
She is the author of The Battle for Home (2016), Building for Hope (2020), and Mosque (2026), all published internationally by Thames & Hudson. Her writings appear in RIBA Journal, Architectural Review, Standpoint Magazine, Middle East Eye, and more.
Her work is featured in 100 Women Architects (RIBA, 2023) and The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture (2023). She has received the Prince Claus Award (2018), BBC 100 Women recognition (2019), and the World Monuments Fund Watch Award (2023). The Battle for Home was named one of the Guardian’s best architectural books (2016), and her TED Talk has over one million views.
SESSION
11:00-11:45 (EN)
MARWA AL-SABOUNI | BUILDING FOR HOPE
In Al-Sabouni’s reading, Syria was not only destroyed by war. It had already been weakened by decades of spatial fragmentation and poor urban governance. Through a rich tapestry of personal experience, unflinching perspective, and unsettling insight, Al-Sabouni further argues that peace and hope are negotiated not only through politics, but also through streets, neighbourhoods, schools, and public spaces. If that is true, how should architects take greater responsibility for the social consequences of what they design, asking how architecture can build peaceful societies, or at least avoid undermining them?
Marwa Al-Sabouni (SY): Architect, urban thinker and author
Moderator: Nora Ramadan Jepsen (DK/EG): Architecture student, Aarhus School of Architecture
Aarhus School of Architecture
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