Archinect - News

The new Qattan Foundation arts center rises as “a beacon of culture” in the West Bank

2018-06-29T18:21:00-04:00

This metallic box is the new $21m home for the AM Qattan Foundation, an arts centre that its founders hope will stand as a “beacon of culture” in the occupied West Bank. “It has been years of fighting to achieve anything close to the standards we wanted. There are defects, but it is the best we could do while building under (Israeli) occupation,” [says achitect Juan Pedro Donaire, whose firm designed the new building]

Refugees Reshape Their Camp, at the Risk of Feeling at Home

2014-09-10T14:38:00-04:00

Public space like the plaza in Al Fawwar is mostly unheard-of in Palestinian camps across the West Bank. Architectural upgrades raise fundamental questions about the Palestinian identity, implying permanence, which refugees here have opposed for generations. [...] Camps were conceived as temporary quarters. The absence of public space was then preserved over the years to fortify residents’ self-identification as refugees, displaced and stateless.

Israel-Palestine: Hope through architecture

2014-03-26T13:27:00-04:00

NOT only in 2013 did the building of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, the core of a would-be Palestinian state, grow at twice the rate of 2012; its uniform architecture is increasingly attracting Palestinians. In place of their distinctive rough-hewn stone houses, Palestinian builders now tend to prefer the uniform style of red-roofed houses that mark out Israeli settlements. “People always look up to the colonial power, even if they resent it [...]”

RIBA proposes boycott of Israeli Association of United Architects' over Palestinian settlements

2014-03-20T13:37:00-04:00

The Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) has demanded the suspension of the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA) from the international body, saying it is complicit in the construction of illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and other violations of international law.

UPDATE: AIA New York fires back at RIBA over proposed boycott of Israeli Association of United Architects

The full RIBA motion, proposed by RIBA Immediate Past President, Angela Brady, and passed by the RIBA council on March 19 was:

Since the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA) has paid no regard to the UIA resolution 13* of 2005 and 2009, the RIBA calls on the UIA, as the international guardian of professional and ethical standards in our profession, to suspend the membership of the Israeli Association of United Architects, until it acts to resist these illegal projects, and observes international law, and the UIA Accords and Resolution 13.

*UIA's Resolution 13 (2005 and 2009) states that “The UIA Council condemns development projects and the construction of buildings on land that has been ethnically purified or illegally appropriated, and projects based on regulations that are ethnically or culturally discriminatory, and similarly it condemns all action contravening the f...