Coexistence - Rami Kanzi

Coexistence

I don’t want to co-exist

Not like good guys and bad gays and dry lies and propaganda

put on black faces cab drivers or deli owners in your racist comedies

not bomb your Dunkin’ Donuts with my Keffiyeh

this powered Fox News

or let you still my food and call it Israeli salad

I won’t mess with the Zohan

Or let them turn rocks of Palestinian children into balloon animals

while Israeli soldiers snipe out children’s heads, shoulders, knees and stomachs

Hollywood snipes years of young ones with lovable tales of blue and white heroes

I’m not looking for your approval

Not a token roll or job on my knees scrubbing toilets in Israelis’ congress

I’d rather fight,

with Blacks and Latinos against oppression

than concede to the mainstream plantation

that sees me as other unless I am checking the college application

I don’t believe in tooth ferry or two thousand claims of homes you supposedly deserved

when people resurrected or walked on water all exist

and the world that fights against racism like Martyn & Malcolm

please get hotels and Steven Bico as a song that never dies no matter what apartheid makes of our bodies

feed mouths and Belfast streets and resurrects Bobby Sanders massage

so that we’ll never be hungry again

and weather you know it or now, I’m the best solution you have

one man asking for one vote only to look at the sea and I’ll never drive you into it

...

I’ll never return the favor

I’m not outstretching an olive branch and a rifle

I’m extending reality,

cause being surrounded by so called enemies on you borders is easier than in your towns and election centers

we may not be brothers! but this neighborhood has made us cousins

I don’t want to coexist, i want to exist as a human being

and justice will take care of the rest

Rami Kanzi

transcribed from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-8sDYO-EVM&feature=player_embedded

Palestinian Prisoners

“It would be better to drown these prisoners, in the Dead Sea if

possible, since that’s the lowest point in the world.”

-Former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman

speaking on the release of Palestinian prisoners

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/IMG/pdf/factbook_Final_online-2.pdf

Palestinians of Concern to UNHCR

'The main legal instruments governing the legal status of refugees in international law are the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Convention) and its 1967 Protocol. Although the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol are applicable to States, people meeting the eligibility criteria set out in them are refugees of concern to UNHCR. UNHCR encourages States to accede to the Convention and its Protocol and supervises their implementation. As of September 2006, 146 states had signed up to the 1951 Convention or its Protocol, or – in the great majority of cases – both.

The 1951 Convention in Article 1A(2) defines refugees as people who are outside their countries because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group, and who, for persecutionrelated reasons, are unable or unwilling to return home.10 The United Nations and Palestinian Refugees Al-Tanf tented site on the Syria – Iraq border.

Article 1D of the 1951 Convention states that the Convention “shall not apply to persons who are at present receiving from organs or agencies of the United Nations other than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees protection or assistance. When such protection or assistance has ceased for any reason, without the position of such persons being definitively settled in accordance with the relevant resolutions adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, these persons shall ipso facto be entitled to the benefits of the Convention”.

UNHCR considers that two groups of Palestinian refugees fall within the scope of Article 1D of the 1951 Convention:

(i) Palestinians who are “Palestine refugees” within the sense of UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948 and other UN General Assembly Resolutions, who were displaced from that The United Nations and Palestinian Refugees 11 part of Palestine which became Israel, and who have been unable to return there.

(ii) Palestinians who are “displaced persons” within the sense of UN General Assembly Resolution 2252 (ES-V) of 4 June 1967 and subsequent UN General Assembly Resolutions, and who have been unable to return to the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967.

A third group of Palestinian refugees consists of individuals who are neither “Palestine refugees” nor “displaced persons” but who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for one or more of the 1951 Convention grounds, are outside the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967 and are unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to return there. Such Palestinians can qualify as refugees under Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention.'

The United Nations and Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, 2007

UNRWA (12/1949)

United Nations Relief and

Works Agency for Palestine

Refugees in the Near

East

The Agency provides education, health care, social services, shelter, micro-credit loans and emergency aid to Palestine refugees in its five fields of operations: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

At the end of June 2008, there were a total of 4,618,141 refugees registered with UNRWA; 1,930,703 in Jordan, 416,608 in Lebanon, 456,983 in Syria, 754,263 in the West Bank, and 1,059,584 in the Gaza Strip.

UNHCR (01/1951)

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

principal aim of the agency was dealing with refugees in Europe left homeless by World War II. UNHCR has a world-wide mandate to protect, assist, and seek durable solutions for refugees as well as for other people in need of international

protection. UNHCR’s mandate covers Palestinians who are refugees within the meaning of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which could include Palestine refugees as defined by UNRWA. UNHCR normally takes up the case of Palestinian refugees only when they are outside UNRWA’s area of operations.

The vast majority of Palestinian refugees fall under the UNRWA mandate, but there is still a large number living in other countries of the region, such as the Gulf States, Egypt, Iraq or Yemen, or further afield in Australia, Europe and America

The refugees are now in their third and even fourth generation. In 1999, there were some 6 million Palestinians worldwide.

Tent #50

Tent #50

Tent #50, n the left, is my new world,

Shared with me by my memories;...

Tent #50, on the left, is my present,

But it is too camped to contain the future.

Without a Passport

I was born without a passport
I grew up
and saw my country
become prisons
without a passport

So I raised a country
a sun
and wheat
in every house
I tended to the trees therein
I learned how to write poetry
to make the people of my village happy
without a passport

I learned that he whose land is stolen
does not like the rain
If he were ever to return to it, he will
without a passport

But I am tired of minds
that have become hotels
for wishes that never give birth
except with a passport

Without a passport
I came to you
and revolted against you
so slaughter me
perhaps I will then feel that I am dying
without a passport

Translated by Sinan Antoon, in Rashid Hussein, Al-A`mal al-Shi`riyya (al-Taybe: Markaz Ihya’ al-Turath al-`Arabi, 1990)

Rashid Hussein (1936-1977)

Born in Musmus, Palestine. He published his first collection in 1957 and established himself as a major Palestinian poet and orator. He participated in founding the Land Movement in 1959. He left in 1966 and lived in Syria and Lebanon and later in New York City where he died in February, 1977. He was buried a week later in Musmus.

Jerusalem's Museum of Tolerance Under Fire—For Intolerance

by Andrew Lawler on 21 October 2011, 11:40 AM

'In a 20 October letter, leading archaeologists speak out against plans to break ground on a museum that they say will disturb an ancient Muslim cemetery in the heart of Jerusalem.

With a dramatic modern design and a central location in the contested city, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance is supposed to bring together people from a variety of viewpoints, religions, and ethnicities. But the project's Jerusalem site is on and adjacent to the ancient Muslim cemetery of Mamilla, located just to the west of the ancient city's walls. Mentioned in 11th century C.E. documents, the cemetery was the resting place for early Muslims as well as Christian crusaders, and was used as a burial ground until the mid-20th century.

In their letter, 84 respected archaeologists took the unusual step ofspeaking out against the museum project, which is scheduled to begin construction next month. The letter, addressed to center board members, Jerusalem's mayor, and the director of the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA), says that the project involved "surreptitious and unscientific removal of hundreds of human burials," and broke Israeli laws requiring that all human remains be turned over to the Ministry of Religious Affairs for reburial. The archaeologists say that at least some of the remains were not properly handled or reinterred, and that the center "hurried the excavations" before construction, "resulting in poor archaeological practices." They also say that the center misrepresented data on human remains in a court case that recently went to the Israeli Supreme Court. Such lapses, the letter says, "would not have occurred with a Jewish burial site."

The researchers include Tel Aviv University archaeologist Raphael Greenberg, who said in a statement that "the case of Mamilla is a travesty of archaeological ethics" and that the cemetery should be "preserved as a demonstration of respect for Jerusalem's shared heritage." Yale University archaeologist Harvey Weiss denounced what has taken place as a "desecration."

Center officials did not return requests for comment. But the center in the past has hotly rejected such criticism. On its Web site, the center maintains that no one complained about the location during years of public hearings. The Web site notes that Muslim clergy invoked the concept of mundras—in which a cemetery is no longer considered sacred—in the 1920s when a Muslim university campus was planned at the site. That position was reiterated in 1964, although Muslim authorities have since voided that invocation. The site has largely been used primarily as a parking lot in the past half century; critics maintain that hundreds of refurbished grave markers have recently been bulldozed in preparation for construction.

In the Supreme Court ruling on a case that aimed to stop the project, the top Israeli judges noted that during the planning period, "no one raised any claim, on even one occasion, that the planning procedures violated the sanctity of the site." In addition, center officials argue, Mamilla is actually on an adjacent site from that of the actual museum.

The archaeologists' furor is just the latest problem for the museum. The company managing the construction project resigned a month ago amid differences with the Los Angeles-based center, and the original designer, Frank Gehry, pulled out of the project last year, though he said it was not due to the controversy.'

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/10/jerusalems-museum-of-tolerance.html

A creative liberal's response to the Middle East situation

15 January, 2009 | By Ian Martin

'One minute she wants to be Eleanor Roosevelt, the next she’s all ‘what would Jackie O do?’

MONDAY. My friend Yossi the town planner calls from Tel Aviv. His furious orthodox family have frozen him out. Not only is he gay, he’s opposed to the current ‘urban remodelling’ of Gaza.

He wants me to mobilise condemnation of Israel among Britain’s more thoughtful architects. I explain that as a ‘creative liberal’ I can’t get involved. Let’s be honest, equivocation has a pleasing Classical symmetry to it, and I simply must not appear to be taking sides.

Those of us in the Campaign Against General Unpleasantness in the Middle East recoil from all violence, equally. Just as we call upon Israel to stop firing rockets into populated areas of Palestine, we call upon Hamas to lift the blockade on Sderot to allow food, medicine and journalists in, and women and children out.

Yossi calls me something in Hebrew, ‘creative liberal’ maybe. Look on the bright side, I tell him: Israelis may despise you for your anti-war stance, but if you were Palestinian your gayness would be much more of a problem, so… The phone goes dead. I hope he’s all right. I was going to ask him if he’d planned any good towns lately.

TUESDAY. Lunch with Rock Steady Eddie the Middle East fixer. ‘Listen, I know what you’re gonna say. It’s tasteless, and a bit previous. But you think about it. Not every day you get a pop at 40km of Mediterranean coast. Oh yeah, it’s gonna happen. And I know some people who are looking for rough ideas, tourist settlements, whatever. Interested?’

I look genuinely disappointed, get out my diary and shrug. Booked solid all the way through to July, mate. Eddie looks menacingly thoughtful. When he doesn’t get his own way he either pretends he couldn’t give a toss or turns into a villain from an Ian McEwan novel.

Luckily, no probs. ‘Plenty of underemployed architects around, my son, bite my arm off for an entrée to Gaza Med. Talking of which, what you having for starters?’

WEDNESDAY. Frank, the world’s greatest architect, calls for a quick catch-up. He asks me how things are going with Wap Biddly Pish, the envisioning consultancy I launched last year.

Pretty well, I say. We’ve been hired by Michelle Obama to re-imagineer the White House. Naturally I don’t tell him that we haven’t even agreed a brief yet. Dithery cow is permanently torn between frugality and glamour. One minute she wants to be Eleanor Roosevelt, the next she’s all ‘what would Jackie O do?’

I ask Frank how his Museum of Tolerance is coming along in Jerusalem. If it all works out maybe Israel can set up a Guggenheim-style chain of them across the region to promote peace and understanding. ‘You fucking with me?’ he snarls. No, no, I assure him. If the two key elements are an ‘iconic’ design and a location above a Muslim cemetery, you could bang them out all over the place. Hey, what about a Museum of Tolerance in Rafah? You know, when it’s quietened down a bit.

Click. Dial tone. Beginning to think there’s a fault on the line.

THURSDAY. Inevitably, I am Skyped by the lying shit Blair. ‘Hi, happy new year, shalom! Can you see me OK?’ His neurotic grin swims into focus on the screen.

As Middle East envoy, his job is to offer tough love to Israel. ‘Look, Iraq’s bought me a lot of clout here. I’m like a best friend who not only has the courage to say hey, you’re doing the wrong thing, but who goes beyond that and DOESN’T say it…’

He draws an obvious distinction between the terrorist entity notionally running Gaza, and ‘the moderate authority that runs the West Bank’. I think he means Israel. He needs concrete proposals. I suggest:

• An international competition to design New Gaza, recycling current residential landfill into humane refugee storage units.

• Replacement eco-tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, above ground and transparent, so that all smuggling may be UN-monitored.

• An urgent conservation and enhancement programme to protect those lovely ancient villages in Israel discovered intact yet mysteriously devoid of people in 1948.

• A green design guide for future illegal settlements.

FRIDAY. Darcy calls. His new outfit apparently expresses even-handedness. ‘Restraint on both sides, and a sort of sparkly buckle thing in the middle…’

SATURDAY. Despair, lunch, read some architectural bullshit about the vibrancy of dense urban environments, more despair.

SUNDAY. Lull in the recliner. ian@martian.fm'

[Thank to Jake for finding this]

Deluze and space of warfare

How IDF uses Deluze - they walk through walls!

this paragraph from 'Hollow Land' will explain

'Reference to Deluze i and Guattari is indicative of recent transformations within the IDF, because although they were influenced by the study of war, they were concerned with non-statist forms of violence and resistance, in which the state and its military are an arch-enemy. In their Book 'A Thousand Plateus', Deluze and Guattari draw a distinction between two kinds of territoriality: a hierarchical, Castesian, geometrical, solid, hegemonic and spatially rigid state system; the other, flexible shifting, smooth, matrix-like 'nomadic' space. Within these nomadic spaces they foresaw social organizations in a verity of polymorphous and diffuse operational networks. Of these networks, 'rhizomes' and 'war machines' are organizations composed of multiplicity of small groups that can split up or merge with one another depending on contingency and circumstances and are characterized by their capacity in themselves with military ideals such as those described above.

Naveh [Major General in IDF] observed that "Several of hte concepts in 'A Thousand Plateus' became instrumental for is... allowing us to explain contemporary situations in a way that we could not have otherwise explained. It problematized our own paradigm ... Most important was the distinction [Deluze and Guattari] have pointed out between the concepts of 'smooth' and 'striated' space ...[which accordingly reflected] the organizational concepts of the 'war machine' and the 'space apparatus'. In IDF we now often use the term 'to smooth out space' when we want to refer to operations in a space in such a manner that borders so not affect us. Palestinian areas could indeed by thought of as 'striated', in the sense that they are enclosed by fences, walls, ditches, road blocks and so on ... We want to confront the 'striated' space of traditional, old-fashioned military practice witch smoothness that allows foe movement through space that crosses any borders and barriers. Rather than contain and organize our forces accordingly to existing borders, we want to move through them' ... ' travelling through walls is a simple mechanical solution that connects theory and practice. Transgressing boundaries is the definition of the condition of 'smoothness'. '

end of quote, very interesting!

Israeli "operational architects'

Trained better than us in urban design and spatial theories!

Israeli Operational Theory Research Institute (OTRI) (operating in the decade of (1966-2006) run obligatory course for all high-ranking Israeli officers from the different corps of IDF. The school developed a curriculum that trains "operational architects". One of the reading lists of OTRI included the following titles:

Christopher Alexander: The Endless Way of Building: Patterns of Events, Oatterns of Space, Patterns of Language

Gregory Bateson: Steps to An Ecology of Mind and Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity

Beatriz Colomina: Architecture Production

Gilles Deluze and Felix Guattari: A Thousand Plateus and What is Philosophy

Clifford Geertz: After the Fact - Two Countries, Four decades, One Anthropoligist

Catherine Ingraham: Architecture and the Burdens of Linearity

Rob Krier: Architectural Composition

J.F. Lyoatard: The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge

Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore: The Meedium in the Message: An Invention of Effects

W.J. Mitchell: The Logic of Architecture

Lewis Mumford: The myth of the Machine

Gordon Pask: Cybernetics of Human Learning

Ilya Prigogine: Is Future Given? The End of Certainty and Exporing Complexity

John Rajchman: The Deluze Connections

Bernard Tschumi: Questions on Space, Architecture and Disjunction and Event-Cities 2

Paul Virilio: The lost Dimension

Matrix of Control

Jeff Halper (born 1946) is an anthropologist, author, lecturer, political activist speaks of the Israeli tactics to create fact on the ground which are irreversible and incorporate the West Bank into Israel and effectively paralyze the possibility of any viable Palestinian state.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGZAaZqfxos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBWQ-kouExU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtrq6NE0Yxk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDOIl3cVFyA

Omar's visit 2

27.07.2011 Wednesday

Urban is about nature of activities and this is the next step to developing any of the schemes emerging from the studio work. To think about the qualities of patches of development. What characterises ones on hill and those in valley. How do we design to leave possibility of future development. Which area it to be central with concentrated activities?

The discussion circulated between the strengths of grid and the strengths of routs following the topography. But urban is not about the form: formal urbanism, informal urbanism are both urbanisms. Do we design large colours of Joe Santiago between the protected spaces of the site or do we play with the confetti of size of the grid? It is a good theoretical dilemma but has little to do with the project, with its life. If a master plan is an organism, what organs do you have in it! Lets imagine function, imagine together the dynamics of the site. Think of the sun, the shade, the spaces to feel cool (3 to 1 sun ration, 1 m wide space requires 3 mitres high buildings to its side to get the shade here). Fill the projects with imagination, more than formal imagination!

The outcome of the studio needn't be a masterplan, the exercises on both ends of the studio work have raised important questions. How do you choose those special moments to protect, and design between them, what do you design between hem, how formal would the arrangement of new development be. What are the patterns of movement. What kind of spaces is a topography led grid going to generate and what types of spaces are going to emerge from a rigid Cartesian grid? How formal should the grid be. What are the restrictions to be put on site? What is the program of in between spaces? How do we create the center of an area within a grid?

But most importantly what is the suitable design for incremental urbanism? Two drawing on the wall today put together side by side pose this question. The map of Al Addesseh with imagined incremental development on plots as they are with no urban planning intervention next to a map with imposed on site Cartesian grid network of roads with the same increntally developed buildings. Stinking was the similarity of the two drawings coming from so opposite directions and philosophies. The topography if site would adjust both to whatever suits it best. The answer in what is suitable for incremental development is not in the road network arrangement . This is what I see. What is it than? Is it laws, regulations or location of civic buildings? Looking for answers and there may be many.

Omar's visit 1

25.07.2011 Monday

Omars visit to the studio was one of the most exciting and positive experiences of this studio so far. Both teams have gone some ways in developing certain urban forms and more or less consciously have taken either a top down rigid urban grid to be filled in approach or the opposite bottom up, all details matter, every bush every personal opinion and design is knitting that with urbanised areas between those selected spaces. But today studio participants were challenged to look beyond their own approaches.

This studio is aiming to come up with a big project , a new urban space for a society without that tradition. But essentially the project should be guiding organic growth by the people. How is it done may be a matter of nationality, state or scale. Is mode of repetition and mass production like in a grid the answer? (Andy Warhol) Can it be a platform of organic growth? Question to be tested in the grid scenario I suppose.

The studio should challenge the amount of housing in the brief, argue further for more. Do we design the site to occupy all land available from the beginning and intensity later, or do we propose to build intensely on smaller area and later occupy rest of site. The risk of not occupying everything from the beginning is a political risk of loosing the land to Israelis, the issue of trust of Palestinian people.

In the study of the sensitivities of the site the should be a process of giving meaning or a feel to selected spaces. This study and the conceptual ideas of grid should be blended, Correlated or collaged. Let's test the friction between maps. Arguments will remain but will adapt to each other. The meeting of thesis and antithesis. Lets connect, disconnect, evaluate, discard also, glorifying what is there. Lets really DEAL with a COLLAGE! Let's re-read the site as an architect. Not as a Bedouin with its sheep. Let's harvest ideas, of what can be done here. What type of effect am i going to face with a decision A or decision B?

The project for Palestinians is set in a situation of conflict and mistrust. There isn't community but individuals who want to protect their land. Some elements of the site like olive trees plantation are there so that no one comes and occupies the land of the owner of this plot. But the economy of development may mean this space of sensitive value and beauty for us as designers has little meaning for the owner. He will build without hesitation. These are anthropological stories of these spaces. How do we combine both quality and economy of spaces and behavior of land owners? And how do we create community?

The only constant is change. Things are decaying. Houses are growing. How do we respect environmental solutions and the growth of the building in the process of urbanisation. Where Urbanization is unification and formalization. Will grid , like in old Roman cities adopt to topology like it happened in Nablus. What is therefore the point of it in the first place, what are the advantages of it as a starting point of urbanisation, at the same time what are the advantages of 'donkey road' network following topology of the hill?

Thinks to think about. In two days we meet again to discuss some propositions.

The grid

24.07.2011 Sunday

I had a conversation with Mat today.

I started working on trying to draw a scenario for development of a small area of the site according to the percolation to later develop the 'Grid' square of the site of the same area and compare the both.

I kind of don't know what i am doing and why am i doing it. But as i statred talking to Mat we started talking more about the idea behind the grid itself and he encouraged me to question this positions, to add to it my observations and to always draw my observations one way or the other.

The grid, as Mat explained is a counterintuitive exercise for this site. It is the most obvious and well known urban pattern of development however on a hill in Jerusalem it feels alien, The hill cannot be cut sideways in parallel and perpendicular chessboard of streets and block between them. Not the old hill with parapets of stone walls which used to cultivate gardens of olive threes. However the argument to do something counterintuitive to begin with which through development may lead to unexpected results is convincing. I cannot reject it completely. I do however thing as i mentioned it in our conversation that a grid ignores the people for which this development is to take place. It ignored topography and weather conditions. Low rise squares with open spaces inside also creates 'walled' divided spaces rather than conditions ,where accidental congregations may take place. It doesn't encourage interactions. The final argument against the grid is that as became clear because of this exercise, creates low rise 2.75 stories high development through the site. When part of the brief is to give Palestinian people a new 'centre of life'. Show them how to live in a new urbanised way. Show them a way of urbanised living, than this type of development misses to acknowledge this part of brief. There needs to be proximity to create cool space in a hot city, there need to be proximity and moments of med high rise to create urban feel. And there need to be spaces of free interaction. Grid needs to be distorted, intensified in some place and loosened up in others. Greed needs to merge with the site. There is no need for grid. I don't know, maybe this statement is untrue. Still to start from a point of contradiction of one's own intuition is interesting and it does lead us to asking important questions.

Palestinian urban life

14.07.2011 Thursday

Nasar's shop, Herods Gate

Rade Shop on the main street

But whole city is not in good shape

Romalla works better - visitors ftom the west bank - started after Oslo

First intifada was very good bussiness, shop was open 1 hur in the day and in that time they would trade for a whole days profit

First floor office, cieiling height 189 cm, because if ceiling is less than 200 cm the owner avoids paying taxes

Tax is NIS 250/ m/year, the metrage is measured when unit changes ownership or type of bussiness

Oslo- Jerusalem for West bank

Very vave jewes come

1986 Nasar was 17

Demographic VEPON

His view on future of Palestine:

Istrael will have to choose between democracy or apar...

If democracy, they will have to let Palestinians be part of this democracy, and allow palesrinians in local goverments, eg Municipality of Jerusalem

September will be dissapointing, but after that change od the way

Cuts of electricity in the evening

Arab world - will be a lot of change

Explains why arabs don't help palestinians:

1. Muslims believe Koran is a book of god and that it is 100% accurate, scientific way to test it
2. Jerusalem is a very special land, god choose, end of world, Zahmahadiw ill rool with help of Jesus, , who will support
3. Muhhemed prayed in jerusalem with all other jprofits, it is special, gate to heaven starts in jerusalem

" Being yourself is enought power for you to struggle and to be yourself"

" So that got will make you do what he wanted you to do."

" jani" - i mean

" Arma's Children" - movie, child who had no hope

" I want to live, see my kids happy... I want to travel, I have dreams!"

All travel in his life

89-92 study in USA

1 week in Istanbul, turkey,

Jordan

Nasar - after the president of Egypt

The one who gives victory to someone

Nasar's House , Mount of olives / Valijaris

1987 built

Storey added 2004

180 m2 per storey

102 m2 official top flat as the guy who measured it ' didn't see' everything

Top floor 150 m2

320 cm floor to floor height

370 cm ground floor stores

conversation about the lifes of palestinian middle class:

He went out with his wife to a German Collony for dinner and felt many eyes on his back. It is unpleasent, feels uncomfortable, doesn't want to go back.

We wants good restaurants to go out to,

Schools and education centres, libraries

All schools were closed in 1967, houses made into chools, small clasrooms, no after shool activities, teachers teaching Israeli juriculim. Children think of chool as of unpleasant experience.

Small room, no playgrounds, no activities, no conditioning, agressive teachers, 25-35 kits per class

Hate shools whole generation

New shool next to his house, big, new built in 1987

Palestinian hospital next to his house

Foorball in the streets in the evening

Restaurant

Go to Jafa

Visit each other

Meet Friday whole familly, lunch, evening,

Going to Ramallah if you want to go out

No Palestinian cinema, theatre, good gym, swim

9 hammams were closed in 1967, no hammams in Jerusalem

Hammams, some days for wemen, some for men

Old fashioned sauna, spa

One in Nablus in Old city

Good coffee shops are very expensive

Library - one Municipal Library

Everybody would rent

House structure: built stone wall, wood on both sides, pour concrete in. 15cm stone, 20 to 30 cm concrete

Typical palestninan house less strong: 7 cm stone, 15 cm concrete, reinforced of course

Kiril's house at Musrara

17.07.2011 Sunday

Architect, Nasar

Planning procedure:

1. Survey (about plots)
2. Road / parking
3. Panik rooms/ safe rooms
4. FILE NUMBER
5. Eletricity
6. Dustbin (180/150 cm)
7. Fire (Sprinkel in basement)
8. Archeology
9. Nature, envoment, boiler, solar sytem,

Tree talle rthan 2 m, move the building not the tree

10. Telecom aproval - BASIC company
11. COMMITY DECISION

Engineer and 10-12 members , municipal architect, building zoning guy, road parking guy

12. Newspaper into the community.
13. Airport approval (report)
14. Road approval - 2 years later than point 2. , than first drawing, 3.5 years
15. Development tax
16. NIS 500-700 for every meter 2

of up to 140 m2 fo family memebs no tax

17. Water ans sewage
18. Tax for digging and filling
19. Constr ans steel drawins
20. Concrete check

At the ned

APPLICATION 4 - check if all is built as per drawins

3000 to 5000 average income of family

Iman, Issa Wea

Brief Issue

Wednesday 13th of July 2011

If the aim of the studio is to propose a plan implemented as a vast investment than the design of it is different than one for incremental growth. (Or is it not different at all? )The most likely is the more realistic approach of erection of 50 to 200 units at once over may years very much based on percolation and land ownership.

The discussion of which scenario is most likely to happen has been unclear and confusing us for the last couple of weeks and as such has been ignored within studio work until today's visit by an UN-Habitat representative Filiep Decorte . He has exposed our lack of understating of the site and questioned the IPCC ways brief writing. The top-down typology and precedence exercises are absolutely alien to the Palestinian context, topography of land and anthropology of human life. The experiential bottom up research doesn't propose any valid development as it is concerned with moments and singular characters. We are lacking a middle.

One interesting point raised is to assume scenario where all owners of land of the site are given right to build. How would than site develop, which spaces will open up and give possibility civic cervices. Which spaces would remain open, how than could those be stitched together to create public open space, series of open spaces and a network of civic life for the neighbourhood. To begin with this approach and observations could generate interesting plan, plan which takes account of anthropology of life and the constant of change.

Top Down and Bottom Up

Tuesday 12th of July 2011

One week of work has passed. The studio is working on 2 distinctly different aspects. Matthew Murphy, Lara Gibson and Christin Svensson with help of others (me included) are developing a top down approach where the site is analysed conceptually. This group is looking at connectivity, density and typology. Jet the examples of masterplans of a similar scale and of good housing, schools, libraries etc are ones of world architects. It helps us Europeans understand what is the scale of things but doesn't bring us close to the site and its issues.

The second group chaired mainly by Fran Balaam and Michael Corr has gone down to the site to draw its stones and shrubs, talk to Bedouins and land owners. Experience it and draw those experiences!

None has drawn a section through a site yet! And no one is planning to yet.

West Bank

Tuesday 5th of July 2011

I've visited a village near Bethlehem today:

Extraordinary experience and my firs tip to the West Bank. I was surprised to see how similar it really is to Jerusalem. The wall made no difference as yet . Lets wait 50 years (got forbid) and East and West Berlin will emerge. However I was shocked with the division which exists in the car traffic. Going to Bethlehem, passing the Municipal border we entered roads which weaved around Jerusalem highways. Country roads under the Israeli high speed new built motorways! Another level of separation.

Looking at how people lived was the aim of the trip, but we found so much more! We found out how they feel being in West Bank, being prohibited from travelling, being micromanaged by legislation! A women we spoke to called Jamile Latif made a long list of recommended reading: she spoke of the matrix of control creates a lot of ever changing bureaucracyto make people feel they are incompetent.

1. Rabkin: A Threat from Within: A History of Jewish Opposition to Zionism,
2. Michael Anthony Hoffman II: Judaism Discovered: A Study of the Anti-Biblical Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, Superstition and Deceit
3. Meron Benvenisti: Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948
4. Andrew Carrington Hitchcock : The Synagogue of Satan

Last on a way back on a lamp post in Bethlehem I have see this poster: Culture in Resistance: www.alternativenews.org

Research scenarios

Monday 04 of July 2011

In the first week of workshop the studio has sketched a narrative of research. To look at different aspect of the site.

Informality

There is an unplanned settlement in the south west corner of site, this is to be researched. I also think informality carries with it the analysis of the way buildings are expanded, added to. Informality to me in this context is a study of the constant growth of the city, the reasons why and the morphology of this growth so that we can plan for it.

Sustainability

This carries with it mainly the study of watershed of the seasonal river in the Al Addesseh valley. But it should also look at the ecology of sun exposure, the vegetation and the gray water.

Affordability

20% of all development is to be affordable housing. In the situation where one of 120 m2 house cost $300 to build affordability is a real issue. Costs escalate with administration fees and with work force from Jerusalem, where is used to be cheaper West Bank workers building Jerusalem houses. There is no scheme foe affordable housing in Jerusalem of West bank. Your bank is your family or community.

Public space

This study requires looking at good examples of places where Palestinian community spend their time. To listen and learn form the people. I wonder if precedence from successful public spaces of Europe are of any significant use here.

Architectonics - typology

The Arab architecture spans from Mesopotamia, Arabian peninsula, Niles area, Africa to Mediterranean. There is no single Arab typology, there is only how people live here and now. There is Anthropology of human existence in this hot climate. This leads us directly to the Precedence studies.

Densities

To understand the brief, and locate it on the site. The typology and density are not interconnected.

Site analysis

Mapping of that is there, what are the moments to be preserved, what are the edge conditions.

This is my look at thaw should be done at the onset, we have 15 other international architects and students in the studio with their own perspective to all issues drafted above. It will be interesting to see where individual researches lead us as a group.

Al Addesseh Masterplan

Sunday 3th of July 2011

The local masterplan was drawn, one later the next and submitted to Ministry of Interior. Both have been rejected. It's not that i trust that Jerusalem Municipality are a clever bunch of people but i do agree with their decision. The masterplans we are looking at are mere 2D splashes of colour caller ZONES! And those zones are only left over spaces between the makings of road engineer! He is the one who truly designed this plan he is the one who designed most new developments across Israel! Yes this masterplan carries similarities with Settlement typology. Mountain top development. Yet it also has an ambition which is a new one. Palestinian society is lacking a local cultural and economic centre and Al Addesseh development is to create a new, as they call it, 'CNTRE OF LIFE' in the valley of the river. Park is to connect all those civic spaces and buildings. All sounds well but feels un-designed.

Was this the reason for rejection of both plans. IPCC argues the reason was strictly political, e.i. The number of units proposed for the site. In May 2011 Municipality has responded with planning guidance for the site. And asked to no more than 2500 units, an estimated population of 12.000 with a 4..3 person family structure. The site can easily take double, quadruple the number of units.

Israelis envisage Palestinian society as a rural one, restrict its expansion. The Palestinians want a statement project, a new urban space a place for new urban lives of its people. They want to challenge the way Palestinian society is perceived. Contradictions multiply! If politicks is at hear of planning decisions than is there of political advantage for the design to look one way or another?

Al Addesseh

Thursday 30th of June 2011

Al Addesseh

This day we were shown the site! Finally! The place the space, the people for whom there is to be a master plan. There is a masterplan, but an unsuccessfully one. We have seen it before, we have discussed it, but prematurely. Only this visit allowed some informed reflection.

Al Addesseh is an area in the north of Jerusalem. It is an empty hill with a seasonal river valley. To the North it neighbours an industrial area, the only Jerusalem industrial area. To the West, a south-west separation wall cuts the hill top in half. Only life happens Bet Hanina neighbourhood to the South and East. Neighbourhood which turned its back to the site. Edges are filled with rubbish, valley is used for occasional cultivation and the hill is empty. It is much steeper than expected and i don not blame anyone for avoiding it in the heat of the day! One hour we were there, burnt by the sun, scratches by viscous plants but cooled by the wind and an occasional tree. The archaeological site on the top of the sill was a disappointingly small rows of stones on the ground.

Al Addesseh is adjacent to the border of Jerusalem. This border was marked on the 27th Jne 1967 with no consideration of topography or demography. Later walls were built. Al Addesseh is cut of its natural historic surrounding. The routes around the site are meaningless at present. What if there was no walls?

All together not a big number of unique observations and feelings but a much bigger and vaster emptiness than expected.

Last of the visits:

Beit Hanina

Doctor's project, an example of a cooperative in a local style. This determined bunch of people buit their own neighbourhood with 2 storey houses of 120 m2. Yet as soon as the construction finishes they will be asking for permission to add another 2 stories! The economics and the timespan of a project like that, of a family house is 4 years just to get permissions! How can one do a cost benefit analysis, foresee the expenses, foresee the changes in regulations in political situations! This is not for economists this exercise, but for determined families which wan a house, need a house! And need it in a safe environment. If not family than the profession will be a a group of bodyguards against the evils of municipal legislation.

Precedence 2

Wednesday 29th of June 2011

The day was engineered to present us with the Other side of Jerusalem, the Palestinian side which has been lost in the war. The old neighbourhoods now inhabited by Israelis now located in West Jerusalem. Reflecting back i think we were taken to see the typologies of old Palestinian housing but also we were there to what was lost. To see the contrast between east and west of mainly Palestinian typology. As such the contrast of quality of places is even stronger.

A brief introduction by a Palestinian planner Osnat Post, who used to work for Jerusalem Municipality has been a sad introduction into the vision of the whole city. Knitted with hundreds of new roads to being for pedestrian use, with Calatrava bridge of in my opinion no real importance or design qualities which are made for this city. An attempt to make Jerusalem Modern is almost impossible! Forgetting all the developer style plans for the city one things was clear at the end of presentation. Nothing has been planned for Eat Jerusalem!

Baqa

A Jewish architect whose name i cannot remember has been king enough to present us with his research on this neighbourhood. Carefully speaking of the history of the area he remembered to say how Jewish pollution lived here among Muslims and Christians. His work was important. Good Quality historic hosing from the turn of 20th century demonstrated typologies that since than i recognise all over Jerusalem.

Ein Karem

Oh this place was beautifully, Similarly to Baqa in it architecture yet it's setting at the turn of a valley looking down onto greenery and up towards mosque , church and synagogue made it so much more astonishing. All three religions lived there peacefully for a long time. Now only Israelis live here surrounded by this beauty. Pitty it has to be this way.

Lifta

Old Palestinian village emptied post 1967 war. Again a beautiful place. This village most of all the examples of the day allowed us to understand the way Palestinians lived on these lands centuries ago. Little streets connecting houses which grew from the hill in locations which the hill itself allowed. There is no distinction between nature and architecture in this typology.

How relevant is it all to the project?