Home as a Diary of the Margins:Mapping Perceptions to Understand the Spatial& Socio-Political Landscapes of Syria PhD

Minerva Fadel [PhD year 4]

Supervisors: Yara Sharif & Samir Pandya

This research investigates the relationship between architecture and the initiation of armed conflict, focusing on marginalisation in the Syrian context. It understands conflict as a spatial and perceptual phenomenon, embedded in everyday architectural environments that reflect long-standing socio-economic, political and geographic inequalities.

Employing a Research-by-Design approach, the study positions home as a critical scale and a gateway through which broader spatial and socio-political dynamics in Syria can be narrated and re-read. Home is also treated as a spatial medium through which individuals perceive themselves and others, and through which Syria can be critically re-read by mapping its housing landscape through the relationship between margin and centre.

Focusing on marginalised areas in north-west Syria from which the 2011 armed conflict emerged, the research employs ethnographic and design-led mapping techniques to document lived experiences across different home typologies situated on the edge between rural and semi-urban areas of Aleppo. These narratives reveal how layered hierarchies become spatially and emotionally embedded within domestic environments, shaping perceptions of marginalisation and feelings of being left behind.

KEY WORDS: home; marginalisation; conflict; research by design