STUDIO TRIP

DAYR GHASANA

The goal of the nine day Kinne trip to Jordan, Israel and the Occupied West Bank was to meet as many persons and voices involved in the Lifta situation as possible. We spoke to spatial practitioners, artists, and activists about Lifta in order to gain a better understanding and appreciation of its complexities. The initial challenge was to decide upon spacio-political scenarios from where we could start imagining alternative futures. Some schemes are based their concept on the assumption that Lifta’s legal case would be won and the village would be preserved. Other students positioned their concept within today’s circumstances, challenging Israeli politics in ways outside the Israeli courts.

Ultimately, the results of the studio are responses to a simple question: what is the agency of an outsider architect in a situation of sociopolitical conflict? The studio worked through the realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (of which Lifta is a microcosm) and developed an architectural lens to dissect its spatial imperative beyond its present situation as merely a memory landscape.

ABWEIN

AJUL

BIR ZAYT

RAMALLAH AMMAN

JERUSALEM

LIFTA BETHLEHEM

DEHEISHE REFUGEE CAMP