Mecca: The Lived City

Date: 

Friday, May 3, 2019, 9:00am to 5:00pm

Location: 

Harvard Hall 102, Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA 02138

The Center for Middle Eastern Studies is pleased to present Mecca: The Lived City, a colloquium examining the ways in which the city of Mecca is imagined, remembered, represented, and visualized from the perspectives of history, literature, landscape architecture, and urban planning.

Organized by: Gareth Doherty, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Program, Harvard Graduate School of Design; and William Granara, Director, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University.

Street in Mecca, Studio Bound Archive
Street in Mecca, Studio Bound Archive
Schedule
Thursday, May 2
Keynote, Harvard Hall 102

5pm: Mecca: From Revolution to Redevelopment 
Rosie Bsheer, Assistant Professor of History, Harvard University

Friday, May 3
All day: Panels, Harvard Hall 102

9:00am:  Opening remarks
9:15:  Tyler Kynn (Yale University): Between Empire and Sacred Space: Mecca as a Global Space in the Early Modern World
10:15:  Ali Almajnooni (SUNY Binghamton): The Meccan Alley: The Decline of Vernacular Architecture
11:15:  Break

11:30:  Omer Shah (Columbia University): "Made in Makkah”: Smart Technology and Human Resources in the Holy City
12:30pm:  Lunch break

2:00:  Drew Wensley (Moriyama & Teshima Planners, Toronto): Mecca: City of Offering/City of Need
3:00:  Hussam Dakkak (Studio Bound, London): Makkah's Belongings
4:00:  Break

4:15:  Discussion & wrap-up
5:00:  End of colloquium

Download colloquium abstracts here.

Contact: Liz Flanagan