Oman Work­shop from Novem­ber 23 to 29, 2025

The work­shop aimed to pro­mote inter­na­tional exchange and raise stu­dents’ aware­ness of top­ics such as earthen con­struc­tion, the revi­tal­iza­tion of his­toric build­ings, and the par­tic­i­pa­tion of local com­mu­ni­ties. Work­ing in small inter­na­tional groups, the stu­dents devel­oped their own con­cepts for how his­toric earthen con­struc­tion sites in Oman could be revi­tal­ized with the involve­ment of the local community.

The event kicked off with experts from acad­e­mia, plan­ning, and prac­tice dis­cussing dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on sus­tain­able urban and regional devel­op­ment, tourism, cul­tural her­itage, and local par­tic­i­pa­tory processes. The pro­gram was com­ple­mented by a lec­ture by Prof. Frank Eckardt at the Ger­man Embassy in Mus­cat on civil soci­ety-led trans­for­ma­tion processes in East Ger­many. The dis­cus­sions and lec­tures pro­vided an impor­tant frame­work for con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing con­cep­tual ques­tions regard­ing par­tic­i­pa­tory approaches and local chal­lenges within an inter­na­tional exchange.

Sub­se­quent days of the pro­gram took the group to his­tor­i­cal and scenic sites such as Birkat Al Mouz, Mis­fat Al Abriyyin, and Al Hamra, where they were some­times accom­pa­nied by local stake­hold­ers and gained insights into tra­di­tional irri­ga­tion sys­tems (aflaj).

The work­shop strength­ened aca­d­e­mic exchange, col­lab­o­ra­tion among the par­tic­i­pat­ing insti­tu­tions, and under­stand­ing of the chal­lenges of sus­tain­able urban devel­op­ment in the Omani context.