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InfraCitizenship

by Yehia Aburaya

 Year 2022 - 2023

This project is the winner of the second prize in the Tectura Awards 2023.

Reimaging a new form of community governance, led by the social practices and infrastructures, as the center of urban politics.

In places where a physical separation wall is engaged, dividing ethnically different communities, it affects the very life of the population hence It cannot be ignored and must be experienced by civilians on a daily life basis. However, this physical form of conflict can be used as a tool for revolutionary planning. Kufr Aqab lies Within the jurisdiction of Jerusalem yet it is alienated by a wall, obtained from the city rights, and not provided with infrastructure and services. This situation of discrimination left the neighborhood with governing void, letting the economic powers shape the urban fabric.

The project wants to break into Ramallah-Jerusalem Street, destruct its monolithic façade, and manifest new urban citizenship. It determines the spatial relations among the urban-built mass fragments. The program is based on the commune center services and transforms it into a productive program, integrating the population with infrastructure in order to create inner metabolism of waste and water management as a tool to achieve sustainability and accessibility followed by values of social collectivity. collective work could be so honored as a local action, but when it is far from practice and does not create connections and relations with all space stakeholders, facilities, and existing buildings, that action won’t become a living and developing practice. Public buildings as access to people, Starting from public buildings, the three schools’ complex is where children meet and share knowledge despite their various backgrounds.

 

In addition, the mosque is a space where people meet to share religion, culture, and values. These buildings will give the intervention a basic network to reach citizens and integrate them within the new formation process. the project suggests a multifunctional building that provides the surrounding new interactive facades. The manufacturer and the public center will be placed as the new façade of Ramallah Jerusalem Street. The building will change the monolithic façade of the street, trying to make a new architectural statement with its entrance and with its tectonic elements which define each program by the exact architectural elements for the use. a new program will be combined with the surrounding, matching each added program to its current surrounding spaces. These programs act like a field of spaces connected together enhancing the urban fabric and creating new relations to the buildings. Breaking facades, act as extensions of floors, combining floors in order to create new space dimensions.

In places where the government is using the tool of urban prison to control citizens’ life by their daily needs, such as the current relationship in Kufr Aqab in which there are strategies of when, how much, and how infrastructure will be delivered in the neighborhood. The weak water stream streams weakness for the citizens instead of water. The trash hill that stays for months on the street emphasizes the urban sluggishness and it affects citizens’ productivity. It’s all about seizing the Palestinians’ right to the city, rendering their reality, building their self-critic, and privatizing the public space accompanied by contesting powers trying to enforce their existence in the neighborhood. As a result, the community reimagines its own form of governance. The social organization and infrastructure will be the center of the new formation of the urban spaces as democratic politics. Moving from urbanization of failure and consumption to neighborhoods of new urban values toward the surrounding.

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