Beit el Arabi
A digital archive of the courtyard homes of Babtouma, Damascus.
Beit el Arabi is a digital archive of traditional courtyard homes in Bab Touma, Damascus, built as my MA thesis project. I chose this subject out of love for my country, I've always been drawn to the beauty of these homes and the stories behind their doors. Each home has its own page with a timeline of its history, alongside a bilingual Arabic–English glossary of architectural terms.
- Role
- Research, design, illustration, copywriting and web development
- Tools
- WordPress, HTML, CSS, JS, PHP, Figma, Illustrator
- Year
- 2026
- Live site
- beitelarabi.com
The challenge
The hardest part of this project was gathering the content. Information about these homes was scattered across books, heritage organisations and online sources, and details like dates, owners and restoration history often didn't match from one source to the next. I had to cross-check everything carefully and piece together each home's story before I could build its timeline.
The timeline layout took a few rounds to get right. Each home has photos across its history, and I wanted them to display properly on both desktop and mobile, so I tested different layouts until the images and dates read clearly at every size.
Photography was just as difficult. Good-quality images of the homes were hard to find, and many I came across were low resolution and didn't do the homes justice. I took some of the photographs myself and sourced the rest from [photographer] Sarah Dergham, with her permission and full credit.
Process
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01
Content First
I started by gathering what already existed about these homes, drawing on sources like Archnet, UNESCO and the Aga Khan Network. Information was often scattered or inconsistent between sources, so cross-checking dates and details became a big part of the work.
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02
Prototype
Because I was new to WordPress at the start, I designed the first prototype in Figma. It covered the homepage, the individual timeline pages for each home and the glossary, and set the overall visual direction.
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03
Custom Theme
The original site ran on NopCommerce through an outside agency, which made even small updates depend on them. I moved it to WordPress and built a custom theme from scratch. This will make it easier for me to manage since I am the one building it.
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04
Finding the Homepage
The homepage went through the most changes. My first idea was an illustrated map of the old city, but after a hand-drawn attempt I wasn't happy with, I switched to something simpler: a hand-illustrated front door drawn by me for each home. The door became the entry point, so visitors step into each house the way they would in person.
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05
Custom Theme
I then built a custom WordPress theme from scratch, turning the prototype into templates for the home pages, timelines and glossary.
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06
Launch
I set up hosting, FTP and SSL myself, and the site went live in August 2026, ahead of my final submission in September.
Reflection
This project taught me the full process of building a site, from research and content through to design, development and launch. In hindsight, I'd have prototyped directly in HTML rather than Figma, since it would have made the move into WordPress much smoother.
Looking ahead, I'd like to launch an Arabic version of the site and keep adding to the archive, documenting more of the courtyard homes of BabTouma so their stories aren't lost.
Illustrations
I hand-drew a door with coloured pencils for each of the six homes, some based on their actual doors. Together, they became the way into every home on the site.
