Editorial

Abstract

In the past decades, The Arab City has fostered a wide array of radical experiments in architecture and urbanism. From leading the wave of ‘instant urbanism’ to building the first zero carbon city, the MENA region has hosted the FIFA World Cup, witnessed a resurgence of social housing and investment in outstanding institutional buildings, public spaces, and education campuses, led major reconstruction and preservation efforts as well as re-affirmed for the world the importance of public space through ongoing civil resistance and revolutions, however brutally repressed.

Beyond the contemporary production of wildly broadcast ‘iconic’ projects, this seminar will contrast the region’s emerging and struggling cities while situating the work within a long history of complex exchanges regionally, between East and West, and between North and South. The seminar will move across time from the Ottoman Empire to the present while also moving across space, contrasting historical centers to emerging ones. Throughout, we will ask what constitutes the project of Arab Modernity, as embodied through architecture and cities, then and now.