How can we discuss the experimental agriculture farm and school Al Mashrou' in our current time? What does this modern heritage tell us about the aims of Musa Alami and our reflection from the current time under genocide, colonial extraction, climate crisis, and toxicity of slow violence? How we can define and present Palestinian architecture and its spatial production under colonial violence? The event will consist of a discussion of Palestinian architecture and spatial production; a presentation of the book Designing Modernity (Jovis, 2022), and a screening of a short film "Landscapes as Archives".

Introduction: Jens Hanssen
Designing Modernity: George Arbid
Al-Mashrou': Pelin Tan & Dima Yaser
Film screening: Landscapes as Archives, 20 min., Pelin Tan, 2023, Ramallah.
Discussion.

Bios
Dima Yaser 

Dima is currently the acting dean of the faculty of Art, Music and Design, Birzeit University, Ramallah. She received her B.Sc. in architectural engineering from Birzeit University, and later earned a Fulbright award to pursue her studies, where she received her master’s degree in architecture from the Pennsylvania State University in the United States. Her research interests are in the fields of Modern architecture in the Arab World, the project of modernity as a social project, its program of social improvement: its failures, and the conditions under which such utopias were produced, and made their way into Palestine, subsequently, its local influences and vice versa. She also has national and regional experience in both architectural and urban design and community development. 
 

George Arbid 
architect, is a founding member and director of the Arab Center for Architecture in Beirut. He holds a Diplôme d'Etudes Supérieures en Architecture from ALBA and a Doctor of Design degree from Harvard University. Dr. Arbid’s writings include Architecture from the Arab world (1914-2014) a Selection, published at the occasion of the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2014 where he co-curated the Pavilion of Bahrain. He recently co-edited with P. Oswalt Designing Modernity: Architecture in the Arab World 1945-1973 (صوغ الحداثة: العمارة في العالم العربي ١٩٤٥-١٩٧٣) published in 2022 in English and Arabic (Jovis and Riwaq). Arbid is currently finishing a report for the Ministry of Culture in Lebanon commissioned by the World Monument Fund: A Roadmap for an Inventory of Architectural Heritage. Besides being a practicing architect, he has served on several competitions and award juries, including the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award 2019.
 

Pelin Tan
Sociologist/Art Historian based in Mardin/Turkiye. Head of the Film Dept., Fine Arts Faculty, University of Batman. Senior researcher at the Center for Design, Arts and Social Research (Boston). 6th recipient of Keith Haring Art&Activism (2019, New York). Lead Author of Towards an Urban Society (Cambridge Univ.Press, 2018) edited by S.Sassen and E.Peitersen, the International Panel of Social Progress. Her current short documentary “Landscapes as Archives” is about the production of architecture in Palestine and Al Mashrou supported by the Qattan Foundation, Ramallah (2023). With Vidokle she produced “The Fall of Artists’ Republic” in Tripoli/Lebanon (2014). Her last film "Gılgamesh: She, Who Saw the Deep" (2022) supported by Sharjah Film Platform. Agonistic Assemblies (Sternberg Press/MIT Press, 2024), From Public to Commons (Routledge, 2023), Climates: Architecture and The Planetary Imaginary (Columbia Univ.Press, 2017), Refugee Heritage (2021), Designing Modernity: Architecture in the Arab World 1945-1973 (Jovis, 2022), Urgencies in Architectural Theories (Columbia Univ.Press, 2015). Forthcoming: “Forms of Non-Belonging” E-flux books.

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