AKU-ISMC Assistant Professor Stefan Weber co-edits volume on multicultural urban environments in the South and Eastern Mediterranean

Assistant Professor Stefan Weber co-edited the volume Multicultural Urban Fabric and Types in the South and Eastern Mediterranean.

A book co-edited by AKU-ISMC Assistant Professor Stefan Weber, Multicultural Urban Fabric and Types in the South and Eastern Mediterranean, was released in January 2008 by Ergon-Verlag (www.ergon-verlag.de/en). The book, co-edited by Weber and colleagues Maurice Cerasi, Attilio Petruccioli and Adriana Sarro, includes work by a number of prominent academics.

The volume is a collection of the main topics discussed during an international seminar, "Multicultural Urban Fabric and Types in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean" held in Trani, Italy which analysed the multicultural influences on urban structure and architecture in Southern and Eastern Mediterranean towns.

The book explores the coexistence of heterogeneous and divergent examples of architecture and urban environments, and urban and typological concepts, even within the same towns and urban fabric. The strong cultural interdependence with Europe, as viewed through architecture and urban models, is seen as an important reality within the eastern Mediterranean context.

The book was co-edited by Weber and colleagues Maurice Cerasi, Attilio Petruccioli and Adriana Sarro.

As well as an inter-regional dependence, there has always been a high level of interaction between cultures throughout the region, and the very local processes of modernisation have assumed major importance as a subject of research. This book continues to further analyse the multifaceted multicultural urban fabric in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean.

As well as co-editing the volume, Weber contributed an article, Changing cultural references: Architecture of Damascus in the Ottoman period (1516-1918). Other contributions to the volume include Inci Aslanoglu's, Foreign influences on residential architecture of Turkey in the late Empire and early Republican periods, Attilio Petruccioli's, Designing a multi-cultural landscape: The case of the reconstruction of Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Maurice Cerasi's The multicultural town form in the North-Eastern Mediterranean: conflict and harmony.

Weber is a well published expert on material culture, whose academic profile combines the fields of material history and Islamic art and history in projects. These projects range from Umayyad Damascus to early modern Tripoli and 17th/18th century palaces in Mt Lebanon to 19th century Ottoman art and urban history. His main curiosity lies in residential and public architecture, interior design and urban organisation (society, administration, fabric, infrastructure, and public space). He has just received a major grant from the David Foundation in Copenhagen to publish his book on 19th century Damascus, which will appear later this year.

Online Resources

• Assistant Professor Stefan Weber's profile
• The Creation of Ottoman Damascus. Architecture and Urban Development of Damascus in the 16th and 17th centuries . S. Weber, (1997-1998), in ARAM 9 & 10 431-470
• The Transformation of an Arab-Ottoman Institution: The Suq (Bazaar) of Damascus from the 16th to the 20th Century . S. Weber, (2000), in: N. Akin, A. Batur, S. Batur (eds.), 7 Centuries of Ottoman Architecture. "A Supra-National Heritage". Istanbul 244-253
• The Restoration of Suq Haraj, Tripoli . S. Weber, (2004-05), in Beiruter Blätter 12-13, 75-92

External Links*

• Publisher's website - Ergon-Verlag

* Links to sites does not imply endorsement of the contents of those sites. AKU-ISMC is not responsible for content on external sites.