“War on Gaza has left 70 percent of roads in ruins after Israeli bombardment,” Middle East Eye, January 23, 2025, ➝. Spacio-cide is a term that refers to the systematic destruction or erasure of a specific space or territory, particularly with the intention to remove its cultural, historical, or social significance. The term was coined by the Palestinian sociologist Sari Hanafi, see Sari Hanafi, “Spacio-cide: Colonial Politics, Invisibility and Rezoning in Palestinian Territory,” Contemporary Arab Affairs 2, no. 1 (2009): 106–21.
Architects for Gaza, ➝.
See Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari, “Absurd-City, Subver-City,” in Open Gaza: Architecture of Hope, ed. Michael Sorkin and Dean Sharp (The American University in Cairo Press, 2021), 90–119. See also Yara Sharif, Architecture of Resistance: Cultivating Moments of Possibility Within the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict (London: Routledge, 2017) ; Yara Sharif, “Landscape of Time and Immobility,” Landscape Research 44, no. 7 (2019): 872–91; and Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari’s White As the Marker and The Eraser: The Politics of the Skin, 2023: a work shown in “Instant Modernism” at the Qattan Foundation, Ramallah, Palestine.
Edwad W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 54.
Issam Nassar, “Colonisation by Imagination” in City of Collision: Jerusalem and the Principles of Conflict Urbanism, ed. Philipp Misselwitz and Tim Rieniets (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006), 222–26.
Sharif and Golzari, “Absurd-City,” 103.
“War on Gaza Has Left 70 Percent of Roads in Ruins After Israeli Bombardment,” ➝.
Julia Hell and Andreas Schönle, Ruins of Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 8.
In his 2012 article “Ruins, Rubble and Human Remains: Negotiating Culture and Violence in Post-Catastrophic Warsaw,” Polish-Canadian scholar Jerzy Elźanowski scrutinizes a tradition rooted in the picturesque, where the ruin becomes a tool for understanding what he describes as “the uncomfortable relationship between culture and nature.” According to thinkers such as Georg Simmel, the results of manmade violence unleashed upon the built and lived environment sit outside of such relationships, thus rendering the notion of ruin into rubble: nothing but a material without cultural significance which is meant to be cleared off. In his article, Elźanowski contests this division and, within the context of the post-WW2 rebuilding of Warsaw, attributes a memorial character to the rubble specifically due to the fact that it contained human remains. Jerzy Elżanowski, “Ruins, Rubble and Human Remains: Negotiating Culture and Violence in Post-Catastrophic Warsaw,” Public Art Dialogue 2, no. 2 (2012): 114–46.
See Objects of Repair, an exhibition by Palestine Regeneration Team (PART) as part of the British Pavilion exhibition “Geology of Brittanic Repair,” curated by Kabage Karanja, Kathryn Yusoff, Stella Mutegi, and Owen Hopkins at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennial.
Nabeel Hamdi, Small Change: About the Art of Practice and the Limits of Planning in Cities (Abingdon: Earthscan, 2004).
The collective exploration of the notion of home and self-build dates back to 2010 when alternative reconstruction techniques were examined. Working alongside UN-Habitat and local partners in Gaza including Professor Farid, we explored available techniques and revisited existing forms of rebuild under conditions of scarcity. For further details on the self-build outcomes, see Sorkin and Sharp, eds., Open Gaza: Architecture of Hope.
Emma Dent Coad, “Architects unite internationally to rebuild Gaza,” Morning Star, December 8, 2024, ➝.
Rob Cowan, Essential Urban Design: A Handbook for Architects, Designers and Planners (London: RIBA, 2021).
Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 1966).
Simon Cook et al., “More than Walking and Cycling. What is ‘Active Travel’?” Transport Policy 126 (2022): 151–61.
Cook et al., “More than Walking and Cycling.”
“Support Gazan Architects: Seed Funder,” Architects for Gaza, ➝.
Ian Sinclair, ed., London: City of Disappearances (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2006).
