Dr. Marwa Al-Sabouni is an award-winning architect, urban thinker, writer, and international speaker based in Syria. She is the author of two internationally acclaimed books, The Battle for Home (2016), and Building for Hope (2021), in which she explores how cities and buildings might be rebuilt in the aftermath of conflict, crisis, or financial depression.
Her work focuses on cross-studying elements of sociology, contextual and psychological analysis, and aesthetics in order to bring to the fore the role of architecture as a society-making tool.
Al-Sabouni holds a PhD in architectural design and Islamic architecture.
She received the Prince Claus Award in 2018, and was ranked in the BBC 100 Women 2019.
She was awarded the Watch Award by the World Monuments Fund in 2023.
The Battle for Home was chosen in the Guardian as one of the best architectural books in 2016, and Al-Sabouni was named by the UK Prospect Magazine as one of the Top 50 thinkers around the World.
Her TED Talk was among the best of the TED talks in 2016 and was viewed over one million times. The Architectural Digest listed her as one of the top contenders for the Pritzker Prize 2018.