Nizar Al-Farra was born in Damascus in 1933 where he died in 2020. He attended a year at Institut d’Urbanisme de Paris (The Institute of Urbanism of Paris) in 1953 and another year at École de Louvre – department of Islamic Art in 1955. He acquired an architectural engineering degree from the École Speciale d’Architecture (DESA) in 1957. He then returned to Damascus to teach Architectural Design and Theory at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (which later became the Faculty of Fine Arts and then the Faculty of Architecture) and served as head of the Department of Architecture between 1961 and 1964. He was sent to Paris yet again to continue his higher education, and in 1970, he acquired a DPLG certificate (a certificate that equates to graduate studies in France). In Damascus in 1975, Al-Farra, in partnership with several architects and construction engineers, established a private architectural firm al-Maktab al-Faniyy li-l-ʿAmāra wa-l-Inshāʾ (The Technical Firm for Architecture and Construction) that later turned into Dar al-Abḥāth li-l-Dirāsāt wa-l-Tanfīdh (House of Research for Studies and Construction). In his lifetime Al-Farra participated in many research conferences worldwide, and wrote a great number of research papers regarding the built environment and urbanism of Syria, taking a special interest in the old city of Damascus. ⁰¹