“In Place in the World City: The Architecture of The Alexandria Quartet.” 

Advisor: Alberto Pérez-Gómez

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                My research explores different modes of dwelling in cosmopolitan public spaces, as depicted in Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet (1957), a tetralogy of novels set in a novelized Alexandria of the 1930s. The central focus is on understanding the significance of place as it contributes to the inhabitants’ sense of belonging to a cosmopolitan city – a humanized space in which people feel at home in a meaningful public realm. 

                 I offer an original contribution to the field by bringing The Alexandria Quartet into conversation with architectural philosophy to establish a connection between the groundedness of people in place and the cosmopolitan urban environment. While conventional means of architectural representation struggle to capture the lived experience of urban environments, the language of literature can reveal such qualities of places. Employing a phenomenological hermeneutic approach, my interpretation of The Alexandria Quartet addresses the following key questions: What are the characteristics of places that people can dwell in and relate to in a cosmopolitan city? How do cosmopolitan inhabitants and cosmopolitan cities shape each other? Inferring from these observations, how can specific qualities of place contribute to creating and recreating a cosmopolitan city? My study locates the answers to these research questions in the experiences of the tetralogy’s characters, who anchor their life stories in Alexandrian landmarks. 

                 Each chapter of this dissertation investigates a mode of dwelling by focusing on a character in Alexandria (L.G. Darley, Justine Hosnani, and Joshua Scobie) who perceives the city as the ground of their own being. My investigation revealed three crucial elements affecting the inhabitants’ sense of belonging.

First, there is poetic imagery, an imaginative perception of the world that engages the emotional senses. Such poetic images of historical urban environments have the ability to create a sense of place coherence and singularity that orients the city dwellers and gives them identity. For example, the Nebi Daniel Mosque in Alexandria evokes a profound urban poetic image, standing at the site of the tomb of Alexander the Great as the center of the city (Figure 1 & 2).

Second, the urban engagement of the inhabitants shows how a theatrical mood within the city establishes shared spaces, facilitating meaningful interactions among city dwellers. The Cecil Hotel, for instance, functions as a theatrical stage in the city, encouraging encounters between strangers (Figure 3&4). 

Lastly, the presence of multiple narratives associated with a place was revealed as a means of creating a festive public space that welcomes people with all their diverse idiosyncrasies. The Arab quarter in Alexandria, with its rich tapestry of narratives, transforms into a vibrant place for cultural festivities (Figure 5). 

 Based on the cumulative findings of these chapters, I conclude that for the cosmopolitan city to become home for its diverse populations, the intermediary of well articulated, poetic, qualitative places are indispensable. Notably, I discovered, the urban places of the city should be open to associations with poetic imagery, given with theatricality and a plurality of narratives.

                 Assuming that unveiling the singularity of place is a central purpose of architecture, I then offer some suggestions informed by my study on how literature and writing can assist architects to assess place. Place-writing is a poetic strategy for measuring the feeling and the singularity of a place, which can help architects to compensate for the shortcomings of our analytical, formal, and stylistic tools. 

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