Decolonizing Architecture

movingcities interviewed Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal on their new project, ‘Decolonizing Architecture’. Set up in collaboration with Eyal Weizman, and produced by the Haudenschild Foundation, the project attempts to use architecture as an “arena of speculation” about possible futures of Palestine.

Rather than undo the power of Israel’s architecture of occupation, the project seeks to turn it on its head, reorient and thus liberate its potential, thereby dealing with the political problem of the re-use of the architecture of exclusion, violence, and control. The transformation of the suburban single-family house of Israel’s colonial architecture may thus suggest a possible repertoire of actions for the urbanization of suburbia at large.

Decolonizing Architecture

After presenting their critically acclaimed Stateless Nation-project in the context of the Architectural Biennale di Venezia in 2003, Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal’s new project ‘Decolonizing Architecture’ is selected as a contribution to the upcoming Architectural Biennale di Venezia, Sept 14 – Nov 23 2008.

While in Bethlehem last March movingcities interviewed Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal on the ‘Decolonizing Architecture’-project, the state of the city in Palestine, the rhetoric of the process (which is feeding nothing), architecture biennials, art, occupation, the wall and their motives to do this research and design. Utopia or Dystopia? Art or Architecture?

Read full Decolonizing Architecture – An interview with Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal.

http://movingcities.org/

Decolonizing Architecture | Interview

The West Bank Wall separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem | Bethlehem, March 4, 2008

Pictures by Bert de Muynck & Mónica Carriço | movingcities.org

http://movingcities.org/

The Wall | Bethlehem snapshots

Former military zone in Beit Sahour | Bethlehem, March 4, 2008

Site visit with Alessandro Petti | Bethlehem, March 4, 2008

Ongoing construction of a public park in Beit Sahour | Bethlehem, March 4, 2008

Pictures by Bert de Muynck & Mónica Carriço | movingcities.org

http://movingcities.org/

Beit Sahour | Bethlehem snapshots

Bethlehem, March 3, 2008

Pictures by Bert de Muynck & Mónica Carriço | movingcities.org

http://movingcities.org/

Bethlehem