Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope (original) (raw)

Under constant assault by Israel, Gaza looms large in our minds and media-a land in which the violent exercise of power seemingly excludes all other possibilities for action. Gaza is frequently examined through the prism of occupation and violence. Rooted in settler-colonial and geopolitical scholarly traditions, this prism expands our understanding of power. Yet it grants scant voice to the multiplicity of Palestinian identities and perspectives. Communicating these silenced perspectives demands a methodological shift-from the realm of abstraction to the domain of culture, including architecture and urban design. * In other words, a shift from the epistemologies of power as a relational conception to its material rendering in the design and construction of the urban environment. Michael Sorkin and Deen Sharp's edited volume, Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope, offers such a novel approach. Rather than deal in denunciation and solidarity, Sorkin and Sharp illuminate the agency of architects and urbanists working from within, utilizing Gaza's modest "as-found" resources and urban potentials to subvert oppression. While recognizing the dynamics of power and conflict, this subversion throws off the constraints of these phenomena, seeking out new possibilities in the politics of reality and representation. Specifically, the authors juxtapose the local work of architects and planners against the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM)-the tripartite planning regime initiated in the aftermath of Israel's 2014 "Operation Protective Edge" that has, as detailed by Sara Roy in the preface, systematically undermined Gaza's Indigenous economy. † In a series of essays covering twenty-two projects, Sorkin and Sharp assemble an international cadre of architects, designers, environmentalists, planners, and activists to "imagine and celebrate the spaces of steadfastness and even hope" in Gaza (p. 11). They do so subversively, leveraging a Marxist-activist approach to the explicit presentation and distribution of architecture as a means to mediate between "limits and possibilities" (p. 14), resist top-down reconstruction, and transgress disciplinary boundaries and power relations. The immediacy of their activism is effectively mirrored in the book's eclectic arrangement, which skillfully threads common interests via the various modes of intervention-thwarting, educating, remapping, and envisioning. Thwarting relates to the understanding of Gaza as a "microcosm of our time" (Baconi, p. 24), where nihilism, dehumanization, and even "critical trends of urbanization" (Sebregondi, p. 198) are tested. Under absurd conditions, argue Salem Al Qudwa (pp. 26-42) and Omar Yousef (pp. 76-84), everyday architectural practices in Gaza are laden with the meanings of modern architecture in the developing