RethinkingRebuilding

Conceived and artistically directed by Daniel Proietto and developed with Know Nation, Rebuilding Humanity unfolds across three interconnected chapters: an architectural welcome across the Library, a film created within the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, and a live performance in the Great Hall.

Film, choreography, architecture, music and collective participation come together to explore how knowledge, memory, imagination, responsibility and care are transmitted across generations. The film treats the Library as a living body of memory - an archive of movement within an archive of knowledge - before becoming part of the shared performance event.

Keynotes and conversations frame rebuilding as a civic practice — one that must restore participation, trust, memory, and public life alongside the physical city.

A series of public conversations bringing together architects, peacebuilders, artists, educators and community practitioners. Drawing on experiences from places affected by conflict, disaster and displacement, the programme examines rebuilding as more than physical reconstruction. The dialogues explore how architecture, culture, education and civic participation can help restore trust, memory, dignity and public life. They create a shared space in which different forms of knowledge, professional, local and lived, can meet and challenge one another.

Hands-on learning for students, educators, and practitioners, using spatial exercises, dialogue, and design methodology to explore dignity and civic renewal.

The masterclasses approach learning as an active and reciprocal process. Participants will examine concrete rebuilding challenges, develop proposals and consider how knowledge generated in Alexandria can be adapted and passed on within their own institutions and communities.

Drawing on Anawana Haloba’s idea of (Re)Pair as both an act and an ethic, participants will explore listening, recollection and kinship as forms of social repair. The workshop will create a temporary shared archive of experiences, gestures and reflections—an emotional infrastructure through which people can encounter one another with care while retaining agency over what they choose to share.

Portals and Corridors considers how artistic practice can create spaces for recognition, connection and collective reflection. Rather than treating repair as a return to an earlier condition, it approaches rebuilding as an ongoing process of forming relationships, carrying memories and imagining new ways of being together.

What makes us able to withstand adversity — and what makes us break? Drawing on lessons from war and conflict, Hanne explores how culture, belonging and shared meaning can both protect us from trauma and help us recover when it occurs.

We tend to think of resilience as an individual capacity, but human beings are profoundly vulnerable alone. This talk is about the extraordinary power of strong communities — and why building them may be one of the most important things we can do before crisis hits.

In societies shaped by prolonged conflict, peace is experienced not only through political agreements, but through the return of everyday life: safety, education, opportunity and the freedom to imagine a future.

Drawing on her work with Elman Peace in Somalia, Ilwad Elman explores how women, young people and communities affected by violence can become active agents of recovery. She shares lessons from supporting survivors, rehabilitating former child combatants and rebuilding trust where formal institutions have been weakened. Light Is Peace presents peacebuilding as the practical work of restoring human dignity and collective possibility. It asks how rebuilding can move beyond physical reconstruction to create the social conditions in which people can participate, belong and shape their own future.

Developed by Daniel Proietto and Know Nation, Embodied Learning investigates how physical awareness influences communication, learning, wellbeing and collective participation.

Drawing on artistic practice, embodied pedagogy and contemporary research into cognition and human development, the workshop is open to educators, students, artists, researchers and cultural practitioners. Embodied learning is also a core pedagogical component of Sensing Space, the global educational programme developed by the Snøhetta Foundation and Know Nation, where spatial awareness becomes a shared language for learning, dialogue and collaboration.

Architecture does not begin with form. It begins with position: in, between, under, towards. Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, Jens Braarvig and Daniel Proietto bring together architecture, philology and choreography to explore how these small words connect thought, bodily movement and lived space.

Jens Braarvig brings a philological perspective to the conversation, exploring how everyday expressions connect physical experience with thought and shared understanding. In the context of rebuilding, this opens a broader question: how can the ways we understand and organise relationships help create places that support participation, belonging and coexistence? Contributors: Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, Jens Braarvig and Daniel Proietto. Moderated by Thania Paffenholz.

Hans Skotte joins Thania Paffenholz, Kjetil Trædal Thorsen and Mehmet Kalyoncu for a critical conversation about what a symposium can achieve and what it takes for its ideas to make a difference in practice.

Drawing on his experience of reconstruction in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Skotte brings the discussion back to the people rebuilding their lives: who defines the priorities, who makes decisions and how outside expertise can support communities without taking control of their future. Together, the contributors consider how the knowledge and relationships developed in Alexandria can translate into responsibility, local ownership and practical action beyond the gathering.

An applied case study asks how destroyed material can become the basis for new homes, local production, cultural continuity, and social repair.

Rising from Ruins examines how damaged buildings, recovered materials and local knowledge can become resources for reconstruction. Through practical cases and place-based experience, the programme explores what should be preserved, what can be reused and what must be transformed. Rebuilding is never simply a return to what existed before. It requires negotiating memory, identity, environmental responsibility and future needs. This platform asks how communities can participate meaningfully in that process and how reconstruction can strengthen local agency rather than replace it.

Rethinking Rebuilding Lab is a challenge-based programme connecting entrepreneurs, architects, designers, technologists, students, community practitioners and public institutions around real urban challenges.

Beginning at Techne Summit Alexandria and continuing into Rethinking Rebuilding, selected teams will develop their ideas through mentoring, interdisciplinary exchange and public presentation. The strongest proposals may continue towards Rethinking Rebuilding in Hatay in 2027. The Lab seeks to turn discussion into action while developing a methodology that can be adapted to other cities and contexts.

An outdoor exhibition tracing the construction of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina from 1995 to its inauguration in 2002. Presented on the library’s plaza, archival photographs reveal the people, engineering and collective ambition behind the making of a global centre for knowledge, dialogue and cultural exchange.

The exhibition connects the symposium’s contemporary questions with the history of its setting. It demonstrates that building a public institution is not only a technical achievement, but also an expression of cultural confidence, international cooperation and belief in a shared future.

A film by Fatima Lianes exploring reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda. Through a fragile encounter between a survivor and a former perpetrator, the film examines how truth, accountability and listening can open a path towards mutual healing and coexistence.

The screening brings the emotional and human dimensions of rebuilding into the programme. It asks whether societies can move forward without denying what happened and how personal encounters can contribute to the longer process of rebuilding trust after violence.

In this visual keynote, artist and photographer Charlie Koolhaas explores how images shape our understanding of cities and societies undergoing reconstruction. Drawing on her work documenting diverse urban environments, including Rotterdam and Dubai, she examines the conditions that allow different communities to coexist and cities to continually remake themselves.

Photography can reinforce narratives of destruction and victimhood, but it can also reveal resilience, agency and the everyday foundations of peace. The keynote asks how visual culture can contribute to rebuilding by showing not only what has been lost, but what already works and what might become possible.

What does rebuilding mean from a child’s perspective? A safe route to school, somewhere to play, access to care and a neighbourhood where they feel they belong. These everyday conditions shape children’s wellbeing and their ability to imagine a future.

Drawing on her work with Save the Children and Cities4Children, Dr Sarah Sabry explores how children and young people can become central to the way we plan, rebuild and care for cities. Connecting questions of housing, public space and essential services, her contribution asks how institutions and communities can work together to make children’s needs and voices part of decisions that will shape their lives.

CCCPA brings its regional expertise in conflict prevention, peacebuilding and Women, Peace and Security to Rethinking Rebuilding. The Centre will contribute a dedicated WPS workshop, while helping integrate women’s participation, leadership and lived experience across the wider programme.

CCCPA will also support the identification of speakers and practitioners from Egypt and the region, strengthening the connection between physical reconstruction, social recovery and sustainable peace. Insights from the workshop may also contribute to discussions at the Aswan Forum. Through a focused workshop and participation across the wider programme, CCCPA will examine how women’s knowledge, leadership and lived experience can inform rebuilding after conflict and displacement. The contribution connects policy with practice and reinforces a central principle of Rethinking Rebuilding: reconstruction becomes more legitimate, inclusive and durable when those most affected are actively involved in shaping it.

A focused roundtable bringing together foundations, funders and strategic partners to explore how long-term investment can support socially responsible rebuilding. The discussion will examine new funding models, cross-sector partnerships and sustained support for locally rooted initiatives beyond immediate crisis response.

The discussion will explore new funding models, cross-sector partnerships and ways to move beyond short-term crisis response. Particular attention will be given to locally led initiatives, education, cultural recovery and the less visible work of rebuilding trust and civic capacity. The aim is to connect financial resources with sustained social impact and locally defined priorities.

Developed by Know Nation and ARRA Collective, The Memory Series explores how societies preserve, interpret, transmit and renew knowledge across generations.

Through conversations, screenings, lectures and interdisciplinary encounters, participants examine the relationship between architecture, archives, museums, cultural heritage, performance, filmmaking and public memory. The workshop brings together architects, historians, curators, artists, filmmakers, researchers and students, and aligns with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina's mission as a centre for knowledge, research, education and cultural dialogue. ARRA is a Sarajevo-based research and design platform rooted in a city shaped by reconstruction.

Methods, cases, and learning are documented so the work can continue beyond Alexandria and contribute to future rebuilding contexts.

Ideas, methods and experiences developed in Alexandria will be organised into accessible resources that can support future learning, research and practical work. Together, these materials will form a living archive connecting Alexandria with the next chapter in Hatay and allowing the programme’s knowledge to travel beyond those present at the gathering.