AL-AZIZIAH · SYRIA
Nathalie Pozzi
Research Trainee • Conservation of historical quarters of Al-Aziziah, Aleppo
Compiled survey • Conference 3 weeks / Neoclassical buildings constructed in Aleppo during the French Mandate
Postgraduate Architecture Program
Academic Institution
University of Aleppo Faculty of Architecture
Location
Aleppo · Syria
Year
2000
Grant Recipient
IAESTE
In 2000, this research traineeship at the University of Aleppo Faculty of Architecture marked an early and formative engagement with the built heritage of the Arab world. Funded through an IAESTE grant, the work centered on a three-week survey examining the Neoclassical buildings constructed in Aleppo during the French Mandate period, a largely undocumented architectural layer of the city's history.
The fieldwork extended beyond Aleppo itself, with travel across Syria during a moment of profound political transition: the death of Hafez al-Assad and the transfer of power to his son Bashar. The photographs from this trip capture a country at a crossroads, its everyday landscapes and cultural fabric suspended between decades of single-party rule and an uncertain future that would only fully reveal itself a decade later in the Syrian civil war.
Taken together, the research and the experience of that particular moment in time gave this work a significance that went beyond its academic scope. The buildings surveyed, the streets documented, and the people encountered belong to a Syria that no longer exists in the same form.