It has been almost 12 years since the author left his hometown, which was at the center of the Syrian uprising. He's made an academic career studying the impact of war on architecture and cities and researching acts of deliberate destruction.
A new project aimed at improving the educational experience of Ukrainian schoolchildren is helping students at the Kharkiv School of Architecture participate in their country’s concerted response to an infrastructure crisis that began in February 2022 and has seen the destruction of an estimated.
It has been almost 12 years since I left my city. And I have never been able to return. Homs, Syria, the place I was born and grew up, has been destroyed and I, like many others, have been left in exile.