A sense of belonging through the inhabited edges of Homs, Syria
L.F.A. Fokkelman (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
R. Schroën – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
A. Luna Navarro – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
This graduation project explores how architecture can contribute to restoring a sense of belonging in post-conflict Homs, Syria. Following years of war and displacement, reconstruction requires more than rebuilding physical structures; it must also support social recovery and reconnect people with a place. The project investigates how spatial organisation, façade design, and material strategies can foster belonging within contemporary housing.
Through a design-by-research methodology, the study combines theoretical research, contextual analysis, material exploration, and architectural design. Research into environmental psychology, neuroarchitecture, and Syrian architectural traditions identified key factors that contribute to belonging, including cultural practices, social interaction, local material expression, and spatial experience.
The traditional Syrian courtyard house was analysed as a case study to understand how architecture mediates relationships between privacy, community, climate, and everyday life. Rather than replicating historical forms, the project extracts and reinterprets these underlying principles within a contemporary housing typology. In parallel, the research explores the potential of pistachio-shell agricultural waste as a locally producible bio-composite façade material, linking housing reconstruction to local resources and economies.
The resulting architectural proposal organises housing around interconnected courtyards, galleries, and inhabited thresholds that create gradual transitions between public, collective, and private spaces. Combined with a material strategy based on recycled rubble, limestone, and pistachio-shell composite panels, the project demonstrates how reconstruction can address both physical and social recovery.
Ultimately, the project argues that architecture can support post-conflict recovery by creating environments that foster belonging, while responding to local cultural and material conditions.