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The concept of “home” can be a fraught one in Palestine, with growing tensions between the symbolic and the actual. Even before forced evictions from Sheikh Jarrah sparked a conflict that resulted in a bombing campaign that destroyed basic infrastructure and displaced some 74,000 Gaza residents earlier this month, there was an urgent need for housing. Some 2,000 housing units were also destroyed.
For one thing, Gaza has never fully recovered from the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, while settlement building—which is widely viewed as illegal—in the West Bank helps cause rising land costs that make home ownership unaffordable for many families. But while larger political issues remain unresolved, new housing prototypes by Palestinian architects could well become catalysts for a kind of peace.
Gazan architect Salem al Qudwa, a fellow in conflict and peace at the Harvard Divinity School, and contributor to a new book called Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope, has developed a green, flexible, and affordable model for self-built homes in Gaza. They are designed to be constructed on sand and rubble, and can create a “nurturing and safe environment for women and children, and to empower communities.”
In 2014, after the last major war left so many displaced, Al Qudwa says that international agencies built housing that was inappropriate to local needs and climate. These included temporary wooden structures that did not accommodate large extended families, isolating people from their multigenerational support networks, and didn’t provide proper insulation for heating and cooling. He contends this was because United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and other agencies employed foreign architects and didn’t consult locals. Now, as the U.S. pledges to give millions of dollars in emergency reconstruction aid, Al Qudwa fears the cycle will repeat itself again.
Part of the challenge, he says, beyond the Israeli blockade in place since 2007 that limits availability of building supplies, is that “Annihilation in the Gaza Strip has become so frequent that houses are being built, destroyed and reconstructed at the same time.” But on a hopeful note, al Qudwa sees the “architecture of the every-day” as a resource for “positive social transformation.”
His prototype is for three five-story homes made of concrete with proper insulation and strong foundations, a key component in creating a sense of permanence in the midst of uncertainty. As opposed to the wooden homes built as temporary shelters after 2014, this model will allow families to grow and will accommodate Gaza’s many widows, who often have to sacrifice their autonomy by moving in with their in-laws. The prototypes are also safer, Al Qudwa contends, in terms of not likely being targeted by Israeli bombing, than the plethora of high-rises that sprang up post-1994, when so many Palestinians returned from the diaspora just after the Oslo Accords were signed (such as the 13-story Al Jawhara tower destroyed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on May 12) and are more cost effective than current models.
Prior to the occupation, limestone was the dominant building material, but it’s now too expensive to import from the West Bank. Instead, he says that concrete, often imported from Israel, is the “new vernacular.” But rather than the tyranny of regimented, uniform housing blocks, his design breaks up scale and massing with brick patterning, lattice-like screening, shading windows, and roof gardens. A shared service corridor is transformed into a summer courtyard, while an external communal staircase connects the different levels with a modicum of privacy.
The prototype is green friendly, incorporating solar water-heating units, rainwater harvesting systems, and grey-water recycling, so crucial to an area with scarce water and electricity, and can be adapted for densely populated areas in Gaza City as well as buffer zones like Jabalia.
With its flat, asphalt-based bitumen roof, the design reads like a Bauhaus version of one of the traditional Gazan courtyard houses that have gradually disappeared, as the need for larger and more modern residences has grown with the population.
Al Qudwa’s model subverts prevailing trends in “emergency shelter” strategies for Gaza, as well as the likes of the much-touted planned “Palestinian city” of Rawabi, in the West Bank. Stretching across 2.4 square miles, it’s virtually indistinguishable from the suburban-style housing popular in America or, indeed, in neighboring Israeli settlements.
But architects like Suad Amiry, the founding director of the architectural preservation-focused Riwaq Centre in the West Bank, are trying to reverse this trend and encourage Palestinians to rehabilitate historic housing and save historic city centers. In an attempt to “spare the remaining Palestinian landscape from additional encroachment by costly new housing projects that do not respond to local needs” the center has so far restored more than 50 small houses and small business spaces in historic centers throughout rural Palestine.
By reviving the traditional concept of exchange-in-kind rather than money, (called il oneh in Arabic), that includes communal effort to construct houses, or, say, lend a hand to olive farmers at harvest time, Riwaq has managed the restorations on a modest budget of $10,000. By involving villagers in renovating their own properties, their programs have also helped revive traditional artisanal building techniques and provided jobs in rural communities that in turn help stem the exodus of young people to big cities.
They’ve even established a new residency that opens next week, in a refurbished historic home in Qalandia, near the main checkpoint on the road to Jerusalem, open to scholars and professionals investigating topics related to “architecture, conservation, environment, community, urbanism, visual art, modern history, and historic archives.”
The trend toward restoration of old, often Ottoman-era homes, is also evident in Bethlehem, where Golden Lion–winning artist Emily Jacir and her veteran filmmaker sister Annemarie Jacir have converted their old family home into a cultural residency center.
The 19th-century, two-story limestone-walled building known as Dar Jacir has welcomed internationals like the Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz as well as children from a local refugee camp who enjoy their “urban farm.” But in spite of such bucolic scenarios, Dar Jacir is only half a block away from the West Bank barrier wall, near the area of Rachel’s Tomb, and a military checkpoint where violent clashes between Palestinian protestors and Israeli troops are common.
On May 15th, the sister’s ancestral home was ransacked by Israeli troops and Dar Jacir’s Instagram feed showed images of broken door frames, walls blackened by smoke bombs and bullet casings found on the scene. A few days later the intrepid artists announced in a statement that they been “cleaning the various cannisters, bullets and other projectiles from our garden” and promising, “We will rebuild.” The centre is currently fundraising online for the $25,000 needed to repair damages.
As many Palestinians sift through the rubble of a fortnight’s destruction, it’s comforting to know that traditional typologies reinvented by a new generation of creatives are paving a path to a brighter future.
