Proctor & Matthews were invited by an international engineering group, to prepare a concept masterplan and ideas for a series of civic and cultural buildings for a strategically important site at the heart of Damascus. The masterplan was designed in collaboration with a local team in Damascus and coordinated by Proctor & Matthews' Associate Professor Husam AlWaer.
The site lies in close proximity to Umayyad Square, the civic heart of the city. It is traversed by the Barada River and bounded to the south by the Central University Quarter.
Analytical studies of the ancient city of Damascus – it’s clearly defined boundary, fine grain, gateway thresholds, and rich tapestry of urban spaces have informed the design of the new city quarter to the west. The proposals aim to draw on the rich cultural heritage and urban morphology of Damascus, avoiding the imposition of generic, contextually inappropriate “international” commercial architecture and monolithic, object-based urban form. The project is conceived as an opportunity to protect and extend Damascus’s cultural legacy for future generations.
The tapering landscape of Tishreen Park, to the west of Umayyad Square, will be provided with a new ‘gateway’ in the form of a proposed landmark exhibition hall and international hotel and conference centre This will define the square on its southern boundary, overlooking the iconic and internationally recognised Damascene Sword monument and with panoramic views of the distant Mount Qasioun.
The proposed fine-grain, mixed-use linear neighbourhood, like the historic city, will combine office, retail, hotel and residential uses along a meandering central street. The existing university campus to the south caps the escarpment edge. This is reimagined as a landscape backdrop to the proposed quarter, with a new linear park and watercourse connecting the National Museum in the east to the Opera House and the proposed exhibition hall and conference centre in the west.
The necklace of existing cultural landmarks is augmented by the introduction of a series of strategically sited cultural markers: a Contemporary Art Museum, a Syria Culture Forum and a reconfigured National Theatre.
