1st Edition
Architecture of Resistance Cultivating Moments of Possibility within the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict
Architecture of Resistance investigates the relationship between architecture, politics and power, and how these factors interplay in light of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. It takes Palestine as the key ground of spatial exploration, looking at the spaces between people, boundary lines, documents and maps in a search for the meaning of architecture of resistance. Stemming from the need for an alternative discourse that can nourish the Palestinian spaces of imagination, the author reinterprets the land from a new perspective, by stripping it of the dominant power of lines to expose the hidden dynamic topography born out of everyday Palestine. It applies a hybrid approach of research through design and visual documentary, through text, illustrations, mapping techniques and collages, to capture the absent local narrative as an essential component of spatial investigation.
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. A Journey Across the Vanishing Landscape: Making Sense of My Territory
2. The Art of Resistance
3. Bringing Life Back to the Historic Centre of Birzeit
4. Under the Surface
5. Air
6. Seeing Less and Less of the Other
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Yara Sharif is a practicing architect and an academic, she is a lecturer at the University of Westminster and at Oxford Brookes University and is a partner at Golzari-NG Architects London, an award winning practice that has developed a reputation of working on sustainable community projects with specific interest in issues of cultural identity and responsive design. Her work generally stretches internationally where she mainly looks at design as a means to facilitate and empower forgotten communities, while also interrogating the relationship between politics and architecture. Sharif has co-founded Palestine Regeneration Team (PART); a design-led research group that aims to search for creative and responsive spatial practices in Palestine. Her research by design was granted the 2013 commendation award – RIBA's President Award for Research for Outstanding PhD Thesis. Her built projects have won a number of awards. She was granted the 2016 RIBA President Award for Research (commendation) in the cities and communities category.
'In this subtle, compassionate, and clear-eyed book, Yara Sharif offers architecture as both a tactic of physical resistance and a contesting form of knowledge and possibility – a critical mnemonic for a culture under erasure. Her profound mappings of Palestine beautifully harmonize space and life and, with courageous modesty, advance creativity and improvisation in defense of a beleaguered, precious, normality'.
Michael Sorkin, Distinguished Professor of Architecture, City College of New York, President and Founder of Terreform, and Principal of Michael Sorkin Studio
