Abdul Mohsen Kodmani was born in Damascus in 1919 and died in 2011. Kodmani first attended the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts for only two years (1943-1945), after which he completed his education at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris (DESA), where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1949. He went on to study at the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts and graduated in 1952 receiving a DPLG certificate (a certificate that equates to graduate studies in France). Between 1950 and 1952 he attended Institut d’Urbanisme de Paris (The Institute of Urbanism of Paris). Kodmani worked in several famous architectural firms in France both during his studies and after graduation, including the firms of Architects: André Laconte, Henry Vidal, Pierre Martín, Raymond Ada, and John Hardell. He enrolled in the French Engineers’ Union in 1951 and upon his return to Syria in 1953 he joined the Syrian Engineers’ Association and was appointed to the Directorate of Urban and Rural Planning in the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation in 1953. He was conscripted into the military (1954-1955) and served in the Staff Committee building in Damascus. He held several engineering and architectural positions in Syria and worked on many state projects, most notably at the Damascus International Fair where he was appointed the Executive Affairs Director. At the same time, he was part of the teaching staff at the Department of Architecture at the Faculty of Fine Arts (which later became a department in the Faculty of Engineering and then the independent Faculty of Architecture). He also started a private firm with the construction Engineer Walid Al-Jabri in 1964. This would be short lived, however, due to a legislation in 1964 that prohibited engineers in governmental positions from working in the private sector at the same time. Kodmani would reopen his firm in 1986 after retiring from his job in the government, and he later retired from architectural work all together in the year 2000. ⁰¹