Military Urbanism and Counteractive Architecture

Singapore, 2011. Conference Lecture

Future Cities Lab International Conference

Israel’s urbanism persistently reshapes the condition of the West Bank through design and a continual rewriting of urban legislations. Checkpoints, borders, the separation Wall, aerial frontiers, the control of natural resources, the Oslo Accord and the sporadic reconfiguration of spatial relations have become some of the most significant tools to support the Occupation. 

Decolonizing Architecture’s projects have on the one hand defined new entry points for the eventual decolonization of Occupied Palestine, simultaneously contributing to the existing theoretical assemblage concerned with spatial resistance in contested spaces. Building upon and further enriching the work of this studio, the object of my doctoral research is to evaluate the subversive value and formational processes of certain heterotopian spaces in violent habitats. This investigative work located at the intersection between cultural studies and spatial design will draw parallel lines of inquiry addressed through the prism of architecture as a device of transduction. 

This short-talk explores and exposes some abnormalities in Israel’s cross-frontier military-urbanism in the West Bank; a real-life laboratory for extra-ordinary spatial practices. The project marks the transition between work created within the theoretical framework of Decolonizing Architecture and the upcoming of more personal system of ideas still premature at this early stage.