Did Syria’s urban architecture help fuel the civil war that has shattered the country and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people? This is the provocative theory proposed by Marwa al-Sabouni, a young architect from Homs who spent two years confined to her apartment with her husband and two children as the city’s historic heart was reduced to rubble.

In a TED talk (now viewed nearly 600,000 times) and a recent book, “The Battle for Home,” Ms. Sabouni, 34, performs a kind of architectural autopsy on her native city, cataloging failings of design and infrastructure that she said paved the way for its eventual destruction.

“This place promoted anger, it promoted revenge,” she said in a Skype interview from Homs, as the electricity flickered and a fighter jet could be heard flying overhead. “Of course, I’m not saying that architecture is the only reason for war, but in a very real way it accelerated and perpetuated the conflict.”

Ms. Sabouni’s ideas and the plain-spoken, unfiltered way she expresses them have drawn influential supporters. United Nations officials have invited her to speak at conferences that try to imagine what a postwar Syria might look like. The conservative English philosopher Roger Scruton, who has mentored Ms. Sabouni for several years via email, calls her an intellectual “soul mate” and one of the bravest people he has ever known.