Open Gaza , livre ebook

OPEN GAZA
TERREFORM
The Gaza Strip is one of the most to create the ordinary conditions Sorkin
beleaguered environments on earth. of the everyday and to reject their Sharp
Crammed into a space of 360 square exceptional status. Inspired by Gaza’s
kilometers (139 square miles), 1.‘ inhabitants, this book brings together
million people live under an Israeli siege, architects, designers, environmentalists,
enforcing conditions that continue to urban planners, activists, and scholars
plummet to ever more unimaginable from around the world to create hopeful
depths of degradation and despair. interventions that consider how life can
Gaza, however, is more than an endless be improved inside the limitations
encyclopedia of depressing statistics. imposed by the Israeli blockade
It is also a place of fortitude, resistance, and outside the idiocy of violence
and imagination; a context in which and warfare.
inhabitants go to remarkable lengths
ARCHITECTURES OF HOPE
This remarkable collective volume
includes architectural contributions
that imagine a better future, touching Remarkable
accounts of the tragic present, and
historical and ethnographic portraits —Rashid Khalidi
that together enable us to see the
community of two million people living
in the Gaza Strip as they really are
and could be, and not as they have
been made out to be by the incessant
campaign of dehumanization to which
they have been subjected.
Twenty years ago, I was part of a group
Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred
of architects, historians, and activists
Years’ War on Palestine: A History of
asked to think about Jerusalem as a
Settler Colonialism and Resistance,
single, undivided city. Led by Michael
1917–2017
Sorkin, we toured the area and
formed a community of practice still
Open Gaza provocatively shows how operating today in opposition to Israel’s
Open Gaza succeeds in providing Gaza continues to be a source of life occupation. The results were collated
a balance between works that in its ingenuity, love, and possibilities. in The Next Jerusalem, and some
highlight the dismal, wanton Simultaneously, it makes clear that of its contributors reappear in this
destruction of Palestinian lives current conditions in Gaza are not volume. In Open Gaza, they are joined
and those that are underpinned inevitable but have been constructed, by a new generation of practitioners
fundamentally by an optimistic, reproduced, and justi ed by lawmakers and scholars, who continue this most
constructive vision of the future. indentured by a political present. vital investigation and struggle against
This imaginative collection addresses From a journey through a network Gaza’s continued imprisonment.
many of the practical questions of tunnels, an alternative digital grid,
Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture posed by urban planning. Yet most agriculture zones, and transportation
usefully, these essays cast Gaza as a routes that rehabilitate a fragmented
constituent urban space, interactive Arab world, this collection of essays is
with the sites and cities around it. a powerful retort to the tired discourse ISBN: 978-1-649-03071-9
This frame permits the reader to that has framed Gaza’s future as a
imagine a future that breaks from our security question contingent upon
present-day reality of “containers,” demilitarization and containment.
siege, borders, and tunnels.
Noura Erakat, author of Justice for
Ahmed Moor, CEO of Liwwa, Inc.Some: Law and the Question
of Palestine
9 7 8 1 6 4 9 0 3 0 7 1 9
TERREFORM Edited by
TERREFORM Michael Sorkin
and Deen SharpThe American University in Cairo Press
www.aucpress.comOPEN
GAZA
Open Gaza is dedicated to the memory of Michael Sorkin,
who fought tirelessly for the social and spatial justice of Palestinians
and whose vision enabled this book to come into being.First published in 2021 by Deen Sharp Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope is
The American University in Cairo Press Michael Sorkin part of the Middle East Urban Studies
series edited by Deen Sharp and 113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt Editors in Chief
Noura Wahby. Published by the One Rockefeller Plaza, 10th Floo r, New
Nic Cavell American University in Cairo Press, York, NY 10020
Maria Cecilia Fagel the series explores new research www.aucpress.com
Vyjayanthi V. Rao from a progressive and critical lens on
Senior Editors the wide-ranging implications of
Copyright © 2021 Terreform
urban transformation in the Middle Sarah Abdallah This edition is co-published by the
East. It engages with the intensifying Corinne Butta American University in Cairo Press processes of urbanization across the Research Assistantsand Terreform region, from large-scale infrastructure
Isaac Gertman and projects to the construction and
All rights reserved. No part of this Jenny Rosenberg, destruction of new cities and urban
publication may be reproduced, stored The Independent Group regions.
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in Book Design
any form or by any means, electronic,
Marieke Krijnen
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
Copy Editor
otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publishe r. Stephen Hoban
Proofreader
ISBN 978 1 649 03071 9
Terreform is a non-proft, urban
research studio and advocacy group.
Library of Co ngress
Cataloging-inFounded in 2005 by Michael Sorkin,
Publication Data
its mission is to investigate the forms,
policies, technologies, and practices
Names: Sorkin, Michael, 1948–2020,
that will yield equitable, sustainable,
editor. | Sharp, Deen, editor.
and beautiful cities for our urbanizing
Title: Open Gaza : architectures of
planet.
hope / edited by Michael Sorkin
Terreform and all the contributors to and Deen Sharp.
Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope Description: First edition. | New York :
are deeply grateful for the generous Terreform : The American
support to this book by:University in Cairo Press, 2021 |
Includes bibliographical references. Omar Al-Qattan
Identifers: LCCN 2020028150 (print) |
Jay Schnitzer and Sara Roy
LCCN 2020028151 (ebook) |
Fonna Forman and Teddy Cruz at the ISBN 9781649030719 (board) |
Center on Global Justice, University ISBN 9781649030733 (pdf).
of California, San Diego
Subjects: LCSH: Architecture—Gaza
Malkit Shoshan at the Foundation for Strip. | City planning—Gaza Strip. |
Achieving Seamless Territory (FAST) Gaza Strip—Environmental
conditions.
Classifcation: LCC NA1478.G39 O64
2021 (print) | LCC NA1478.G39
(ebook) | DDC 720.95694/3—dc23
1 2 3 4 5 25 24 23 22 21
Printed in ChinaEdited by Michael Sorkin and Deen Sharp
TERREFORM
The American University in Cairo Press
Cairo•New YorkCONTENTS
6 PREF A CE
Sara Roy
10 INTRODUCTION
Michael Sorkin and Deen Sharp
16 GAZA’S SKIN
Tareq Baconi
26 ARCHITECTURE OF THE EVERYDAY
Salem Al Qudwa
42 RING CITY: A METROPOLIS — 
NOT AN ENCLAVE
Terreform
60 FOUR TUNNELS
Bint al-Sirhid
76 THE QATAN CENTER FOR CHILDREN
Omar Yousef
84 TIMELESS GAZA
Mahdi Sabbagh and Meghan McAllister
96 ABSURD-CITY, SUBVERT-CITY
Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari
120 PLANNING RUINATION
M. Christine Boyer
142 RE-ECOLOGIZING GAZA
Fadi Shayya and Visualizing Palestine
158 THE INTERNET PIGEON NETWORK
Helga Tawil-Souri
174 COLLECTIVE EQUIPMENT
Royal College of Art, ADS7 196 FRONTIER URBANIZATION
Francesco Sebregondi
212 NORMALIZING THE SIEGE: THE GAZA
RECONSTRUCTION MECHANISM (GRM)
Pietro Stefanini
224 CITY OF CRYSTAL
Craig Konyk
240 NATURAL GAZA
Romi Khosla
256 ZOO, OR THE LETTER Z,
JUST AFTER ZIONISM
Malkit Shoshan
266 SOLAR DOME
Chris Mackey and Raf Segal
278 SOCIAL HYDROLOGY: A DESIGN RESISTANCE
Denise Hofman Brandt
292 REDRAWING GAZA
Alberto Foyo and Postopia
302 INTERDEPENDENCE AS A POLITICAL TOOL
Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman
326 HYPERPRESENT ABSENCE:
SUGGESTED METHODS
Hadeel Assali
338 TIMELINE
340 CONTRIBUTORSPREFACE
Sara RoyPREFACE 7
The Gaza Strip is a part of the world clearly articulated to me by Israeli
whose small size belies its profound ofcials over thirty years ago—
signifcance. Gaza has always been was to prevent the emergence of
the heart of Palestinian nationalism a Palestinian state, to ensure that
and the core of popular defance, no viable political or economic
adamant and unrelenting in its entity would ever be established
resistance to Israeli occupation and on land Israel claimed as its own.
in its rejection of any attempt to A key feature of Israel’s strategy
displace it, insisting on its presence was the division and separation of
in the world. Because of this, Palestinians living under occupation,
Gaza, fundamentally, has defned which meant separating and isolating
1 Palestine’s relationship with Israel. Gaza—the source of nationalist
In this vein, Edward Said writes: resistance—from the West Bank
and Jerusalem, whi