Archinect - News

ALNY chat discusses 'Domicide' and its application to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza

2024-06-11T12:05:00-04:00

How might this destruction be stopped? International law remains one of the only paths to seek accountability. And it is not only lawyers who make its systems function. Through their stewardship of the built environment (including long-standing engagement with the right to housing and the politics of climate change), architects, planners, and preservationists can shed light on the techniques, procedures, and consequences of modern urban warfare. They also have the potential to change them.

Berlin-based Palestinian urbanist and scholar Natasha Aruri, formerly of the TU Berlin, breaks down the concept of ‘domicide’ with MIT's Balakrishnan Rajagopal and SITU founding partner Brad Samuels. The term can be traced to the 2001 title Domicide: The Global Destruction of Home, but has roots in modern conflict (namely the U.S. bombing of Japan and Germany during World War II). The most recent reporting from human rights groups, including the UNWRA, has said that more than half of all buildings in Gaza have been destroyed since fighting began there on October 7th.

New U.N. report warns of potential decades-long rebuild for Gaza

2024-05-09T12:02:00-04:00

A new report on the socio-economic situation in Gaza from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has established a baseline for rebuilding as a cease-fire deal that would end the seven-month Israel-Hamas war continues to be up in the air. The findings lay out the most realistic timeline for recovery, which first requires an estimated 37 million tons of debris removal and the construction of temporary shelters for Palestinians who have lost more than 80,000 of their homes since the fighting began in October.

Israel will have to allow five times the volume of construction materials as it had after its two most recent incursions in order for Gazans to regain "normalcy" by 2040. The UNDP stated it would likely take another four decades to rebuild entirely, given the number of damaged residential structures. Around 25,000 buildings have been reported destroyed in Gaza, with 32 hospitals now knocked offline and another 100 schools or universities being completely destroyed, accordi...

Architects for Gaza launches Gaza Global University for afflicted Palestinian students

2024-03-18T18:07:00-04:00

The UK-based group Architects for Gaza, appealing to the educational needs of displaced Palestinian architecture students in the occupied territory, has just announced the creation of a new learning platform called Gaza Global University.

The announcement was made earlier this month via Instagram. The group says: "We know that to rebuild Gaza requires rebuilding its institutions, its culture, its life — and importantly for those of us not situated in Gaza — it requires a rebuilding of all our worlds. We see Gaza Global University as a radical pedagogical project rooted in hope and shared humanity."

According to the group's website, the objectives for developing the initiative include:

Establishing links with academic institutions internationally to offer online tutorials and lectures free of charge Gazan students in any part of the world, who are students of architecture, and related courses, such as design and urbanism.
Offering technological assistance for remote communication at...

A Palestinian architect looks for a future in Gaza’s rubble

2024-02-05T11:47:00-05:00

Over 60% of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed. But it's also the heritage, the culture, the collective memory. So it's important for us to rethink how to rebuild, how to accommodate one of the highest densely populated spots on Earth. Do we go vertical? Do we go horizontal? You've got an urban fabric. You've got a coastal fabric. You've got a rural fabric. Each one requires a different way of looking at it.

Yara Sharif is the London-based co-founder of the group Architects for Gaza. The Palestinian architect tells NPR the task now is to assemble a society literally of the rubble using the remnants of some 200,000 buildings that have been destroyed and in the most environmentally sensitive ways possible. A top-down solution that keeps Palestinians out of any post-war rebuilding process has been a growing concern for activists, who brought the issue to the International Court of Justice as part of South Africa's attempt to use it to stop the violence in December.

To date, the IDF’s military strategy has razed more than 70% of all residential structures, plus another 20 or so hospitals and approximately 350 schools. Its plan to establish a 23-square-mile "buffer zone" within the Gaza Strip's borders has become another recent point of contention (h/t LA Times).

Over 100 Gaza heritage sites damaged or destroyed by Israeli strikes, report says

2023-12-05T13:30:00-05:00

The Spanish NGO Heritage for Peace has published a report on the impact of recent Israeli airstrikes on Gaza’s cultural heritage. The report, released on November 7th, claims that over 100 cultural heritage landmarks have been damaged or destroyed as of publishing. Reports of subsequent damage since November 7th are not yet available.

The Heritage for Peace report lists 104 pieces of built heritage impacted by the latest war, of which 4 have been completely destroyed, 11 have been partially destroyed by direct shelling, and 89 have been partially destroyed by indirect shelling. The list of sites spans mosques, churches, archaeological sites, historical houses, shrines, cemeteries, and museums.

Among the sites completely destroyed by direct shelling is the Omari Mosque, described by NPR as “one of the most important and ancient mosques in historical Palestine.” Meanwhile, the Church of Saint Porphyrius was partially destroyed, described by NPR as “the third oldest church in the entir...

Michael Sorkin and the politics of architecture

2020-04-13T14:03:00-04:00

[...] Michael advocated for collective, neighbourly, and walkable cities, while also practising architecture and urban design in ways that embraced these same principles. Even so, his shrewd wit always recognized the fallacy that architecture can change society by itself. “Architecture is never non-political,” he told Aleksandra Wagner in a 2006 interview “it always reinforces a set of social relations, whether within the family or between the ruler and the ruled”.

Architect and educator Fadi Shayya pens a heartfelt, personal tribute to the late Michael Sorkin, pointing out his involvement in Palestine and initiatives like the Open Gaza project.

"So many others were closer to Michael," Shayya writes in Failed Architecture. "So many others are more qualified to speak of how we lost an architect, urbanist, activist, author, and teacher with Michael’s passing. To me, we lost a forceful and inspirational presence for social justice, Palestine, and humanity."

Influential architect, educator, and critic, Michael Sorkin, passed away from COVID-19 on March 26, 2020.

Why is Gaza reconstruction so slow?

2015-07-08T11:29:00-04:00

Ultimately, the UN and international aid agencies continue to call for a lifting of the blockade. They say this is the only way to bring in all the materials needed to repair homes and infrastructure and revive the local economy.

Yolande Knell shares some information explaining why in the year since the 50-day conflict with Israel, not a single destroyed home has been rebuilt.

The broken promise to rebuild Gaza

2015-07-06T04:15:00-04:00

The politicians know what they’re doing: Gaza is a liability, not a vote-winner. It’s much easier to keep the Strip under closure and blame Hamas, who certainly shoulder a large portion of the blame. As do the Egyptian, the Palestinian Authority and the international community.

A Year Since Gaza

One year after Operation Protective Edge, Haaretz sends its top writers to examine what has changed since the 50-day conflict between Israel and Hamas, and to ask whether – or when – the next war will erupt.

It's been one year since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, the costly military campaign that claimed the lives of 73 people on the Israeli side and over 2,200 Palestinians.

Since those 50 terrible days of fighting between Israel and Hamas, there have been negligible strategic gains. Sporadic rocket fire from the Gaza Strip has resumed, as have retaliatory Israeli airstrikes. Billions of dollars in aid promised by the international community to rebuild Gaza remain just that – promises. Lessons have been ignored, victims largely forgotten.

On the anniversary of Operation Protective Edge, Haaretz takes an in-depth look at the past, present and future and asks: If we don't learn from our wars, are we doomed to repeat them?

-Editor: Jillian Jones

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After Banksy: the parkour guide to Gaza

2015-03-11T14:29:00-04:00

My name is Abdallah AlQassab, nearly 50% of us are unemployed and we are very available to show you around

In response to graffiti artist Banksy's Make this the Year YOU Discover a New Destination Gaza tourist video, the territory's parkour team show us what real life is like there and their dreams beyond the border. To the sounds of Palestine's biggest female hip-hop artist, Shadia Mansour, join Abdallah AlQassab and the rest of the free-running team as they flip, somersault and leap their way round the ruined city

Do Israelis have any idea how bad it is in Gaza?

2015-02-18T15:30:00-05:00

I’m extremely concerned that if you leave Gaza in the state it’s currently in, you’ll have another eruption, and violence, and then we’re back in a further catastrophe, so we’ve got to stop that,-Tony Blair

Even a hawk like Tony is worried.

"The scope of destruction in Gaza remains enormous. According to the UN, over 96,000 homes were either damaged or destroyed by Israeli air strikes. The donor states that have pledged to transfer money have yet to do so, re-building is going nowhere, many are still seeking refuge in UNRWA schools and the winter storms have only increased the damage to the homes and neighborhoods that survived. "

Eyal Weizman on understanding politics through architecture, settlements and refuseniks

2014-12-02T16:56:00-05:00

They would never discuss issues of repression or land grab directly. There is a certain pact of silence around the political dimension of architecture there. Schools of architecture depoliticise the profession, they put it very much within the domain of aesthetic experimentation

Eyal Weizman - architect, writer, activist and professor of visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London - is explaining how architecture and power are inextricably linked, even within structures that appear largely to serve an aesthetic purpose. Buildings or cityscapes that a tourist crosses the world to see were often conceived with the intent to oversee their populations.

Weizman has just returned from a trip to the US. Like Israel, highways in Los Angeles serve more affluent communities and bypass the poorer areas. In the Gulf, he says, the labour force is contained, separated and supervised. Such capitalist tools of separation, seen across the world, "are all part of the growing toolbox of architecture and planning in the West Bank – it's composed, I mean it has a sort of colonial history, but it's contemporary vocabulary exists overall, everywhere you look, everywhere you go you have the politics of surveillance, separation, supervision and sometimes even oppression. Pal...

Editor's Picks #383

2014-09-05T00:39:00-04:00

Sean Smith published the first in a series of articles in which "three architects (two designers and one licensed architect) discuss their transition from student to professional, their changed perceptions of the career and the challenges and joys of their current work".

The interview with Elizabeth Christoforetti looks back at her time with DEGW, her time at Harvard's Graduate School of Design and her work at Utile, where she tackles everything from "front-end design work" to "entrepreneurially-oriented master planning".

After reading this interview and others like it, Chris Teeter is convinced studio education "of the architect should not be the dominant method for training an architect...somehow salary means working like studio and the only reason we work so long when we start is we learned very little on how to be an architect and know even less on how to offer additional non traditional input on projects that get sourced out to construction managers, lawyers, specialists, etc......

What can ‘forensic architecture’ reveal about the conflict in Gaza?

2014-09-02T13:25:00-04:00

Weizman has also made a name for himself as the chief proponent of “forensic architecture”, by which he analyses the impacts of urban warfare for clues about the crimes that were perpetrated there. To Weizman, buildings are weapons. When he looks out across the landscape of the occupied Palestinian West Bank [...] he sees a battlefield. “The weapons and ammunitions are very simple elements: they are trees, they are terraces, they are houses. They are barriers.”

See For Yourself

2014-09-01T12:29:00-04:00

it is clear that the scale of damage is unprecedented, with approximately 13 percent of the housing stock affected, five percent of the housing stock is uninhabitable – an estimated 18,000 housing units have been either destroyed or severely damaged. This on top of a shortage of 71,000 housing units before the Israeli attack.

This is a real challenge for architecture. I urge Architecture for Humanity to directly involve and bring this crisis into their working platform, producing ideas of reconstruction.

Rebuilding Gaza

2014-08-20T14:32:00-04:00

The Palestinian Authority government has estimated that it could cost $6 billion to rebuild the territory: 50,000 homes have been totally or partially destroyed, roughly 250 factories have reportedly been rendered inoperable, and Gaza's sewage treatment facility and power plant have been damaged, shrinking the available supply of drinkable water and creating a potential health crisis for residents.

The recent (and ongoing) Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip has taken a massive toll on the densely-populated urban area's infrastructure. While the need to begin reconstruction is urgent and unquestionable, the mechanics are much trickier. In order to get cement into Gaza, Palestinians must either smuggle it in or wait for Israel to slacken the seven-year old embargo. Israel, on the other hand, remains opposed to easing restrictions on construction materials after Hamas used imported cement to construct its network of tunnels, although it has recently signaled that it will slacken some elements of the blockage. The process will begin with a donor conference with funds processed by the Palestinian Authority, which is supposed to lead reconstructive efforts.

Gaza attacks: Lethal warnings

2014-07-14T22:13:00-04:00

Israeli military lawyers argue that if residents are warned, and do not evacuate, then they can be considered legitimate collateral damage. Under this interpretation of the law, the civilian victims become human shields. This is a gross misuse of international law.

Israeli architect Eyal Weizman who teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he runs the Forensic Architecture project pens an account of misinformation IDF uses on so called "warnings" and fabricating the "human shield" factor further criminalizing Hamas. The article illustrates how the IDF lawyers legitimizing Israeli Army's ruthless destruction of civilians indiscriminately and coins the term "lawfare".

In this research based article the misinformation and terminologies circulating the western media are debunked.

Mr. Weizman and his team of researchers reconstruct a 3d model of destroyed Salha family home in Gaza based on the interviews of the surviving members of the family and other evidence.

"Our work was an attempt to reconstruct what happened between the warning shot and the lethal shot. The architectural model provided an aid for the recollection of events obscured by time and trauma. It was evidence intended to counter the Israeli Army's version of the event and the...

In Gaza, real estate is at a premium

2011-07-08T18:10:36-04:00

If you believe the adage about real estate -- that bit about the three most important things being location, location, location -- then one would think there are few places worse to own a home than the Gaza strip. [...] And yet, home prices are up sharply.