The Dream of al-Ash?r: Memorial, Aleppo

War is the most serious cause of damage to both artificial and natural landscapes. The project was created as a proposal to experience reflection on memory, lost identity, and culture in the scale of the place, the city of Aleppo, Syria, and the whole world as an example of aggression in which the nation was forgotten.

The concept is between the past and the future, between what is real and imagined, tangible, and noticeable. It’s a combination of two worlds and their borders. Intangible built of emotions, memories, experiences of people who suffered war and material, manifesting itself in the form of a memorial as an architectural vessel filled with memory. The project visualizes memory as a bridge to gather the divided society. The idea is to create a place of remembrance in a positive sense, giving hope to those returning to the country. \nThe transience of the spoken words inspired the creation of a temporary structure, which is intertwined by the path of memory - a loop of experiences of people affected by war trauma. The Memory Map was the starting point of the concept, showing the scale of the problem.\nThe building is the concept of a system of city structure developing over time. The whole buildings are a symbiotic organism of opposites. An architectural sculpture, being a vertical play of archetypical forms. The dualism of the form is resulting from the location, which was an important place on the tourist route. The destruction of the war had affected the perception of this space. Therefore, the project combines the past- vibrant bazaar referring to traditional Arabic architecture with a golden memorial, a link between place and memory, being a symbol of hope.\nThe memorial as a personal and collective structure commemorates forgotten people and creates a recognizable landmark. The script creates a path of memory that fills the memorial. The Dream of al-Ash?-r brings together the tale of al-Ash?-r from „The book of the one thousand nights and one night” and the current situation of the nation to tell a story of rebirth. The Dream stitches together non-fiction and fiction to create a narrative that allows us to revisit the origins of war to see a struggle of people with a perception disorder that results from PTSD. The story is a symbolic representation of the psychological states of people affected by the war, who have been allegorically transferred to dream. A dream, which is a metaphorical memory record.