A Series of Coffee Interviews of Ashraf M. Salama on Some of His Contributions -- Discussant Attilio Petruccioli

February 01, 2021

A Series of Coffee Interviews of Ashraf M. Salama on Some of His Contributions -- Discussant Attilio Petruccioli - Bibliotheca Orientalis, Bari, Italy.

20 May 2020: As many cities in the world are still under lockdown, we wonder about our future urban everyday life. We asked Prof. Ashraf M. Salama how the pandemic has affected the way we experience architecture and the urban space. What will be the challenges that future architects and city planners will have to take on? Views about urban density, urban qualities, traditional cities, the changing nature of urban spaces, emerging cities, the global condition and how all these are impacted by current restrictions as part of covid-19 measurements. Our discussion is centred on what does it mean to inhabit the gulf city now and in the future and how people engage with the city.

2 June 2020: In this coffee meeting we focus on two key contributions of Salama & Wiedmann Demystifying Doha - On Architecture and Urbanism in an Emerging City' and Building Migrant Cities in the Gulf: Urban Transformations in the Middle East. The underpinning research conducted over decade of these two book was funded by Qatar National Research Fund, Qatar Foundation. Demystifying Doha features a comprehensive discussion on contemporary architecture and urbanism of Doha as an emerging regional metropolis. Building Migrant Cities in the Gulf takes the discourse to a wider scale of the Gulf Region.

28 August 2020: This coffee meeting discusses the latest book of Ashraf M. Salama and Marwa M. El-Ashmouni: Architectural Excellence in Islamic Societies which uncovers architectural and place production away from ‘Orientalism’ and the colonial chauvinistic views by constructing narratives unique to various contexts within the Islamic world while discussing the role of the Aga Khan Award in setting values of architectural and urban excellence. The examination of more than sixty awarded & shortlisted projects developed in more than 35 countries delineates decolonised narratives on the enduring values of architecture; architectural and urban conservation; built environment sustainability; and architectural pluralism and multiple modernities.

Michael Crosbie interviews Ashraf Salama on possible outcomes in a post-coronavirus world.

How Might the COVID-19 Change Architecture and Urban Design? Ashraf M. Salama, a professor at the Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, Scotland, and the director of the Cluster for Research in Architecture and Urbanism of Cities in the Global South, has been following how these disciplines might be changing. He’s recently written a publicly peer-reviewed paper on some of his findings: “Coronavirus Questions That Will Not Go Away: Interrogating Urban and Socio-Spatial Implications of COVID-19 Measures.” I sat down with Salama to discuss some of the issues he raises, and what their implications might be for the built environment in the future (7 May 2020) (Feature image taken from CommonEdge by Andy Yueng, as part of his “Urban Density” drone series).