Domicide in Homs & Beyond | Architect Ammar Azzouz

In this powerful episode of The afikra Podcast, Dr. Ammar Azzouz, a research fellow at the University of Oxford and author of *Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria*, reflects on the profound personal and collective trauma of losing one's home during the Syrian conflict. Growing up in Homs—a city long overlooked despite its strategic crossroads between Damascus, Aleppo, and Lebanon—Azzouz recounts the emotional weight of returning after 14 years in exile, only to find a city ravaged by war and urban erasure. He introduces the concept of 'domicide'—the deliberate destruction of homes and domestic life—as a critical lens to understand war’s human toll, contrasting it with the global focus on cultural heritage destruction. Azzouz reveals how the violence against Homs began not just in war, but in the pre-war 'slow violence' of urban redevelopment projects like the Homs Dream, which displaced residents under the guise of modernization. His work, including the 'Slow Violence in the City' project, explores how the city lives on in diaspora through art, memory, and grassroots reconstruction efforts. He critiques top-down, investor-driven rebuilding models, advocating instead for trauma-informed, community-led approaches that honor memory and identity. Drawing inspiration from examples like Coventry’s preserved ruins and Beirut’s Beit Beirut, Azzouz calls for a reconstruction that remembers rather than erases. The episode is a moving meditation on home, memory, and resistance. Azzouz shares five deeply personal places he longed to return to—his university, the Palestinian refugee camp Mukhayyam Al-A'idin, the old city’s Al-Nuri Mosque, the historic clock tower donated by a Syrian Christian woman in Brazil, and his family home—each symbolizing layers of loss, resilience, and belonging. He challenges international institutions like UNESCO to center local voices and reject extractive, apolitical heritage models. Ultimately, the conversation underscores that true reconstruction must begin not with buildings, but with listening, healing, and justice. The episode ends with a poignant reminder: while ancient sites are preserved, the lives of ordinary people—whose homes were destroyed—are too often forgotten.