Anas Soufan

BIO / Anas SOUFAN

Anas is a scholar, artist, architect and urban planner specialist in the management of historic towns and world heritage sites.

From an academic perspective, Anas holds several degrees in history, history of Art, historic preservation and architecture design from Syria, France, Switzerland and the USA. Currently, he is a Visiting Professor at the School of Architecture, Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT, Boston, USA) and an Associate Researcher at the Center for Middles Eastern Studies at Harvard University, (CMES, Cambridge, USA). Previously, Anas taught in several universities worldwide and he published, reviewed, translated and edited books, reports and articles in several languages; in parallel, Anas has been an advisor, consultant and specialist-expert for several international organizations including UNESCO, ICOMOS, ARC-WH, AUDI, etc.

In practice, Anas is the founder and CEO of NABNI-H US, based in Boston and Paris. Through this entity, Anasdesigned and realized artifacts and projects of architecture design, urban design, adaptive reuse and heritage management in a variety of scale, mainly in France, Syria and the USA.

Anas’ current focus is on the post-war recovery of historic towns and world heritage sites, dealing with the interconnections between the urban and architectural design with the ethical, economic and sociopolitical aspects of the recovery process. He is advocating for the application of a new eclectic-practical approach - a ‘Participative Scope of Change’- based on innovative understanding of the partnership among public authorities, civil society organizations and concerned international entities. In this framework, Anas is the designer of the international initiative Fustoq, gathering the Syrian Ministry of Culture, the Arab Regional Center for World Heritage, national and international non-governmental organizations and NABNI-H US. In this framework, Anas is the coordinator of the related project AARMP - Ancient Aleppo Recovery Master Plan.