2022

The site is a depopulated and destructed multilayered Palestinian village that holds a diverse historical legacy of many civilizations. The village was the largest in galilee until it was invaded in 1948. Villagers became refugees, later on, the Jewish National Fund has planted a forest on the village ruins as a policy that Israel tends to apply on destructed villages. Those forests are used as a colonial tool that its main purpose is to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, serve the myth of "Blooming the desert”, Greenwashing and cover war crimes. The Project Aims to create a memorial park that transforms the natural landscape into a display and evidence, where the main role goes to the site, and relies on the experience in order to create new understanding of history and fix the narrative of the space; by adding THE MISSING LAYER of the narrative; the Palestinian presence. The main project statement was adding a circle in the middle of the site creating a trail and all trees inside the circle were moved out as a bold statement that refuses and objects, revealing all the truth inside that circle, the journey has multiple landscape, artistic and architectural features that complete and enhance the experience. It has both an open-air museum and an underground museum. The journey starts in the visitor center that links to the ring trail that works as a platform, goes through a series of follies that narrate historical periods of the remains, the trail ends up carving the ground creating the underground museum that narrates the Palestinian “Missing Layer”, in a set of different spaces that change according to the phase it stresses, Home. Nakba 1948, Exile, Road to Palestine and Return. The ability of playing with light underground easily made it the concept for designing those spaces, where “Light is Home”. The journey ends by existing and freely walking through the columns memorial that are planted in the center of each former house.

The project suggests shaping 5 abandoned plazas & connecting them to create a neighbourhood with all its existing & new elements. On the arch. level, the project is built upon preserving the existing & using urban infills to fill the dead spots to revive the Armenian neighbourhood by bringing Armenian artisans back, since they are famous for their skills in crafts & creating workshops for them on the GF & residential units on the first floor with terraces next to the Armenian Church, designed to accommodate non-Armenians schoolkids too, where they can learn Arm. crafts like photography/goldsmithing to pass them on to the next gen. & encourage interaction between all residents. The products will be sold in the shops(Arm. Plaza). New entrance for 1950’s church & a glass dome in place of the destructed one are added. Next to it, a triple-volume Arm. courtyard restaurant is added. These 2 plazas include the components of the Arm. neigh. & are inclusive to non-Armenians through their activities & respectful to what is existing. All additions are in grey to show the contrast with the old in white. On the urb. level, the 5 plazas link it to Abu Darwish with a central plaza, the Library (which is now a privatized parking) that acts as a natural extension to the existing library in Ashrafieh Cultural Complex (1st Fl.). It will contain smart street libraries for kids. Abu Darwish Plaza is split into 2, the existing theatre with the new chess board for kids/ theatre seats & the commercial/ Friday prayers part. To physically link the plazas, there's a stitching layer made of elements that change with the needs of each plaza it passes through. It starts with stairs that becomes a wall/building/platform from each side. The platform next to the mosque shows West Amman’s towers & the other shows Amman’s refugee camps. This simple link. element connects the rich/poor, the mosque/church. The kid is the seed for change & if two kids play, then nothing but love comes out of it.

The project is a concern for people with low incomes in al-Wehdat camp, which is a Palestinian refugee camp. The project is located in the heart of the al-Wihdat camp, especially in the al-Wihdat popular market, which is one of the largest popular markets in Jordan. These are the educational and social problems that started forming this project to try to find real solutions to improve the lives of the people living in the camp, most of whom are people with limited income. From the training where the trainee learns theoretically and practically and produces products and sells these products by presenting these products to market visitors, and thus the training is complete as it begins with learning and training and ends with a sum of money to start his own project, and through these four activities, the main functions of the project were formed as The project contains classrooms for theoretical teaching, workshops for vocational training and production, and shops for the sale of these products. From here, the product is presented and presented to The local market to visitors inside the market and to the merchants in the vicinity. These stores were placed on the external direction and on the longest front in the project in order to complete the context inside the market and the concerns would be behind these stores, which are open to each other and do not open directly to the market. There are classrooms and administration on the front facade of the project. The most important thing that was taken into consideration during the design is how to use materials similar to the materials used inside the camp while finding unique solutions to reuse some of the unused and unused elements so that they can be used and revive many things in the camp. It was taken into account not to infringe on the privacy of people, place, and visitors.