CPS celebrates our colleagues at RIWAQ for their contribution to the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennale
A nongovernmental organization, RIWAQ develops alternative architectural practices with the goal of cultivating social change. Founded by architect and writer Suad Amiry, and codirected by Dr. Khaldun Bshara and Shatha Safi, Riwaq has a multidisciplinary, majority-women team. It sees the protection of historic sites as key to the reinterpretation of fragmented landscapes, and as a strategy for the recovery of precolonial identities and memories. Working among architecture, art, and spatial design, Riwaq employs speculative ideas as a means to imagine possibilities for healing a wounded land and reclaiming space. In close collaboration with rural communities in occupied Palestine, Riwaq has shifted the paradigm of architectural conservation toward a multidisciplinary approach that accounts for personal and historical narratives, environmental factors, socioeconomic conditions, and cultural identities. Its honors include the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Curry Stone Design Prize, the Prince Claus Award, and the Habitat for the Best Worldwide Architectural Practices.
Established 1991, Ramallah, Palestine
Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari are award-winning architects and academics with an interest in design as a mean to facilitate and empower ‘forgotten’ communities, while also interrogating the role of architecture, politics and social commitment. Combining research with design their work runs parallel between the architecture practice NG Architects, London and the design studio at the University of Westminster. They have co-founded Palestine Regeneration Team (PART). A design-led research group that aims through speculative and live projects to search for creative and responsive spatial possibilities. Sharif and Golzari have been working on community projects in the UK, Europe and the Middle East with different NGOs and partners including UN-Habitat. They have been working closely with Riwaq on the 50 Villages project offering alternative future scenarios to heal the landscape. Both have won a number of awards including RIBA President’s Award for Research (Commendation) 2013, 2016. Their recent work is exploring new means to rethink the Palestinian rural landscape.