Poetics of Walkability began as a thread in Diana Salahieh’s research curiosity on walkability of cities and has evolved into a living project shaped by shared practices, encounters, and collaborations.

Diana Salahieh

Diana is a Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Architecture, Department of Urban Design, at the Czech Technical University in Prague.

Diana got her BA in Landscape Architecture at the American University in Beirut and her MSc. in Landscape Planning at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. She worked as a landscape architect in both Prague and Brno before switching gears into artistic research and academia, embarking on her PhD journey in 2022.

Project Advisors

Layla Zibar, PhD, Dr. ing.

Layla is a visiting postdoctoral fellow at Ghent University’s Human Rights Centre. Her research examines spatial aspects of rights violations, violence, forced displacement, House, Land, and Property (HLP) rights, and humanitarian interventions in relation to questions of spatial justice. She holds a dual PhD in architecture and urbanism from BTU (DE) and KU Leuven (BE).

Poetics of Walkability develops an interdisciplinary methodological approach to examine walkability in times of crisis, (post-) conflict, destruction, displacement and disruption.

At its core are three analytical layers / modes of thinking, researching and learning:

Embodiment involves embodied practices, from exploratory walks (guided, slow drifting, and walking-together) to creative movement sessions, that awaken bodily awareness and reveal how memory is embedded and embodied in urban spaces.

Narrative surfaces through engaging with local literature, oral histories, and writing, allowing personal and collective memories to (e)merge.

Representation materializes through visual methods and multi-media mapping which enables critical (re)imagination of spatial experience and memory.

By embracing slowness as both method and ethos, these layers expose the palimpsestic nature of everyday footpaths, where traces of the past intersect with present experiences, aspirations, and imagined futures. Slowness, in this sense, becomes a form of resistance to accelerationist knowledge systems and a challenge to processes of invisibilization. It offers a critical lens through which to unconventionally examine and cultivate relational ways of knowing.

The methodology is inherently agile — adaptable to different geographies, timeframes, and available resources — providing a grounded and accessible mode of experiential learning and research.

Ultimately, Poetics of Walkability explores a counterpoint to dominant narratives of urban space and memory politics, repositioning embodied practices as vital to urban design, architecture, and memory studies.