DS4 Booklet

DS4 | Imagined Moments of Possibilities Cutting and Breathing: Surface, Air, Below & In between School of Architecture | Oxford Brookes University

DS4

2013-14

Field trips in Beit Iksa, West Bank and Nicosia, Cyprus, November 2013

Boy in Beit Iksa, Palstine | Photo by Steinunn Eik Egilsdottir, the winner of 2013/14 OxArch Photography Competition

DS4 | Imagined Moments of Possibilities

Cutting and Breathing: Surface, Air, Below & In between Tutors: Nasser Golzari & Yara Sharif

field trip

Within our proposed theme: ‘Imagined Moments of Possibilities’ and by using ‘live’ projects, we propose a journey of observing, mapping, engaging, making and testing to create responsive architectural design proposals. All are meant to explore the possibility of empowering communities and stitching their spaces together through rich and complex architectural projects at an urban scale and also at the scale of the body.

To explore some of the above objectives, this year we will followed on what we have started the previous year; working on a historic village near Jerusalem, addressing critical subjects of environment, natural resources, employment and identity. The design interventions were at times speculative and at other times very pragmatic and site-specific. In all cases however, we placed emphasis on mixing innovative design with social engagement. Field work was in West Bank working with local NGO,RIWAQ, and in Nicosia (Cyprus), working with Girne American University.

ALEX HAIGH Jalazun Memory Archive

TERRY TANG Stitching Palestine: Subversive Agriculture

The Jalazun Memory Archive examines identity of place for refugees who have no access to their home towns and villages. It aims to enable them to maintain their relationship with their homes and pass on the associated cultural identity to subsequent generations who are growing up in the camp. The project is also intended to act as an expression of the refugees determination that their time in Jalazun is only a temporary exile. This is expressed in the architecture of the archive which incorporates numerous “suitcases� of artefacts in the facade representing the preparedness of the refugees to return. Similarly a linear park follows the boundary of the camp and identifies it as a package of people awaiting their opportunity to return home.

The project sited near Qalandia checkpoint proposes to use agriculture as a form of subversion to reclaim land for re-population and cultivation. Through the social participation and instilling of community ownership, the aims are to enhance the social structure of the people in refugee camps across Palestine, connecting people back to the land where a stable source of food can be established and a more positive identity for checkpoints as new areas of hope and growth can be created. As a reactionary architecture against illegal separation walls put up by the Israeli government, the local people construct temporary spaces for learning, habitation and public space for gathering through use of recycled and reclaimed building materials. Using guerrilla agriculture and a series of seed catapult structures as methods of taking back the landscape, the checkpoint agriculture hub, rooftop allotments along with commercial farms will establish new ways of economic self-sufficiency.

STEINUNN EIK EGILSDOTTIR Urban Living Rooms

NORAISHAH MOHD MOKHTAR Women’s Haven: Cultivating Moments of Paradise

The proposal consists of creating social spaces for women in Palestinian villages, where they can gather for different activities while simultaneously enjoying privacy. The title, ‘Urban Living Rooms’, reflects the concept of creating a social space for women whereby they feel as safe and as comfortable as they would in their own living rooms. In Beit Iksa, the Urban Living Rooms will be spread over different areas, with each of them having a special function; collectively they will make a multifunctional network, of which in time will strengthen women’s independence and social empowerment. As an example, the centrally located Urban Living Room in Beit Iksa, of which connects to a public space in front of the village’s castle, mainly focuses on celebrating food (growing, preparing, cooking, eating and selling food) and music (listening, making and dancing to music).

Dear Diary..

“I feel invisible on the other side of the city (South Nicosia). Is it because of the scarf I’m wearing?”

Women’s Haven is a place of safety or refuge for women coming to Cyprus. A haven for women who feel insecure, judged or misunderstood by the society or purely just want to be with others who understand and accept you for who you are no matter where you came from or what your status is. Series of moments of Paradise will be cultivated among yourself, helping, learning from each other, finding your own moment without being judge by others in fact it could be shared ­to create beautiful memories.

ALBERT ZHENG SUEN Hacking Possibilities

OLIVER MA FAT 418: Palestine Lost Identity

Hacking is the manifestation of resourcefulness and curiosity to explore and to exceed certain limitations projected by a given sys­tem. It can be seen in the context of architecture to move the design and creative process to the user, allowing engagement to suggest means of alternatively misuse and to generate architectural spaces previously unimaginable by the designer or the architect.

Using the waiting of commuters to stitch Palestinian communal history, the project will link past time, the people and the land. It is composed of three layers, each one of them adding to strengthen Palestinian identity. The first ones are the 16 chambers. Each one of them represents a district in Palestine before the occupation. They act as living cemeteries, constant reminders of the past. The next layers are the living capsules. The 418 of them symbolising the destroyed villages, aim to be temporary living space for commuters. This will create a sense of community with living units above ground and public spaces below. Lastly the third layer is the regeneration of the quarry by the creation of a garden. This new landscape will make the Palestinians connect to their land.

The site explores digital and analogue tools and techniques to CREATE an urban fabric that will house an electronics scrap recycling factory, repair shops for electronic goods, accommodation for its’ workers and a hacker space for the village to use and gain self-reliance. Hacking in its origins and present usage represents a wide-ranging set of pursuits, and a mind-set and approach to problem solving which seeks to identify yet unrecognized potential and opportunity.

HO MING LEE The Public Studio

ALEXANDER FRANCIS YULIK Bird’s Island

Life is always full of challenges but companions give you power and bring you going through it.

Architecture is a media to initiate the connection, build up the relationship among people and provoke the social interaction. The Public Studio is a possibility to create dialogues between people in different genders, ages and countries by responding to the programme. Enhancing the social interaction and moments is the way to relate architecture to existing urban fabrics. This intervention is an active object provoking moments inside different spaces. Moment includes formal and informal interaction among people. The formal one refers to the spaces with certain programme. The informal one happens in the space between programmes.

This in-between spaces become landscaping to create a more cohesive and pleasing environment for social interaction. Providing spaces which are high connectivity and circuitry for public make this intervention to be a collective space.

The project takes place at Kyrenia, Cyprus. A town on the northern coast of Cyprus, noted for its historic hasrbour and castle. The project is to design a bird island at Kyrenia. The aim of the island is to raise the awareness of local people in regards to bird`s information. It provides all kinds of information that mainly relate to birds and water. The island not only work as a information provider but also to provide entertaining moments to the public. The Island consists of different kinds of informative programs such as, library that archived all kind of bird`s information, bird gallery space as well as a bird observation tower that the tower itself is a large bird`s habitat. The other program that the island consist are the entertaining spaces such as, public community center, long-narrow swimming pool, cafe and restaurant and someother viewing yet relaxing point like rooftop, sitting benches around the island and a bridge at the end top of the island.

MUHAMMAD ARIEF BIN MUHAMAD JAMARIN Bird Living Room ‘Place between Spaces’

MELISSA FOURIE Osmosis from the Periphery

The narrative of the project adopts “a Place between Spaces”, referring to the location in Cyprus Buffer-zone area as the center attention of the project. The inevitable conflict between the locals and the birds has long been an issue (Bird Trapping). The manifestation of Super-nature within the Buffer-zone as the Bird Safe Haven may somehow able the full use of the space in between the ruins. The intervention is an earnest call to provide an awareness and simultaneously distract the ever politically divided people of North and South to concentrate on bigger issue of environmental and to celebrate this most fragile part of the Divider as historical heritage of Cyprus

In pursuit of meaning rather than performance, an architecture has been developed through a narrative approach which centres around human experience. The process of people interacting with their environment generates a map of experiences and memories, these being highly revered by Palestinians - a people scarred by dispossession, dispersion, occupation and profound uncertainty about their future. These memories are subconsciously embedded and reflected in every day objects, which subsequently gain status as artefacts of History. The artefacts are used in conjunction with a digital network of data exchange to transform various Historical Palestinian villages in the Seam Zone into Virtual Archiving Centres of Palestinian Heritage. “Our history is in the whispers that surround us and the tales passed on from those who came before”. [Urban Decay]

s

u see

acros st

alley? he v

tour

o yo

d What

Ex to port glo of ba Vir l co tua mm l E un xhib ity itio n

Photographic Timelapse

Digital Data Reception

ture anufac On-site digital component m

Digital Research Facility

litical recruitmen t

the

ved

an oth

loom

er’s ot bo

ing kef yeh

in

The last wor k

Step

Young p o

Cros sin

g for

Boot Scan

bidde

n bo

A in

DN

unda

ries

Indige

nous

ps

stam

What is Jerusalem to you?

er pres

Fauna

NARRATIVE SECTION 02 Dissected and Integrated

LUKE EVANS The Cache Repository

DAVID MOORE Industrial Enlistment and the Art of Guerilla Farming

A PROJECT OF DUALITIES - Exploring salt as a preservative - Exploring salt as a corrosive mineral

Project 1: The Bird Folly - The topic my group was tasked with was the ‘Bird’. through extensive research the core ideas of Migration and Murmuration became key focuses. The project developed into what we call ‘The Murmuration Garden’, a micro-habitat that provides shelter for migrating birds which travel through Palestine, whilst affording the opportunity for people to observe the birds from viewing platforms. Project 2: An Architectural Response - The second project is an individual task focused on an element which captured my imagination whilst on the field trip. Entitled ‘Industrial Enlistment and the art of Guerrilla Farming’, my proposal creates a textile mill and adjoining cotton farm which aims to tackle to issue of unemployment and lack of identity in the village of Beit Iksa. It focuses in on the village at the human scale whilst also zooming out at the urban and countrywide scales investigating how it can have a positive impact on the West Bank through the use of migrating birds.’

The proposal does not fight for what is already contested land, instead it seeks to create its own.

By annexing the shore of the Dead Sea an island is created and it is here where we find a Palestinian preservation archive. The buildings seek to stitch people together through a nostalgic sense of belonging and rekindling of memories. The tactile nature of the rooms and landscape become a form of narrative therapy set deep within it’s context.

It reveals an untold story, it is a place where the landscape is as much a part of the program as the artefacts and collections. The entrance is physically and deliberately divided creating two distinct routes, allowing circulation through either the building or landscape. Both these routes attempt to extol the daily life of a Palestinian past and present.

JOHN BALL The Living Rooms

MOHD ELIAYES HAMZAH Plug-In Nicosia

The Living Rooms is a temporary housing, and reconstruction facility specifically designed for the Palestinian people of East Jerusalem who have had their houses demolished by the Israeli forces. The process for Palestinians to gain a building permit in East Jerusalem is an arduous, expensive and a corrupt one which makes every effort to remove Palestinians from the Jerusalem Municipality. A process called the ‘quiet transfer’ is used to remove Palestinians from Jerusalem though zoning, administration and regulation. One of the primary ways they do this is through demolishing illegal houses, However the process of demolition is not one of zoning or administration, it is a destructive, violent, humiliating and potentially family breaking act. The Living Rooms acts as a transitional housing facility between demolition and reconstruction but also allows the family to rebuild their house off site in a controlled environment. Through material testing, fabrication and planning the men of the house are able to build simply, efficiently and safely.

Plug-in Nicosia believes that the revitalization of urban life is not obtained merely by architecture alone, but by focusing on solutions which encompass all aspects of the city system. Regenerating the networks of social, environmental, and physical elements plants the seed for flourishing, liveable urban communities. The ecological reconfiguration of Old City of Nicosia uses the city’s strong history of citizen participation to develop a sustainable and economically-viable landscape. The proposal intends to generate the strategical mechanisms as a starting point for the self reparation of the urban tissue. Strategical concepts: a) Ecological-corridors: Inter-vention strategy based on the concentration of budget and effort on a structural-line of program and activity. b) Urban-catalysts : Light and dismantable structure works as a dynamizer-focus.