Alongside preserving the personal and collective memory of the built environment, and revealing the circumstances that accompanied and produced the built form, architecture archives are also a repository of designs of buildings and neighbourhoods that never materialized, or that were later altered or demolished. This exhibition offers an opportunity to revisit these projects and bring them back to life. Whether abandoned due to political changes, mismanagement, or economic constraints, or later altered or demolished as a result of personal vagaries or changing needs, the stories of these designs and buildings are recorded in the material traces that remain. In this respect, this exhibition re-introduces seven projects through drawings and physical models. At a time when three-dimensional representation is almost reduced to digital renderings and animations, visitors are invited here to a sensorial journey in which the appreciation of a sketch, a detailed drawing, or a photograph is enhanced with an experiential encounter with a physical model built at a relevant scale.

Three documentaries were commissioned for the occasion as an integral part of the exhibition. Filmed on site in Baghdad (and Mosul), Damascus (and Homs, Latakia, Aleppo) and Tunis (and Carthage-Sidi Bou Said), they invite viewers to participate in a journey back and forth between archival material and actual visits to the buildings themselves, examining their current condition. The documentaries offer an opportunity to witness “live” the discovery of sometimes unknown archival materials, or confront the unfortunate absence of their traces.

The exhibition is part of a long-term vision that will unfold in a variety of research projects, including a database locating archival material on Architecture in the Arab world, covering public and private institutions both in the Arab world and beyond. It is hoped that the gathering and dissemination of such research will open up more areas of investigation for scholars and foster broader public interest.

Read the press release here.