uia

(re)occupation

a strategy for mitigation

UIA student competition entry Summer 2005

This project considers a future for Israelis and Palestinians where tensions are diminishing and more intimate contact and exchange including housing proximity are developing. Such a future would beg the question of the west bank wall. Could it serve only as an object to be removed as an obstacle to this emerging future, at best partially preserved as a monument to a troubled past. Or can the wall serve as an instrument of this future, a mechanism (re)imagined and (re)designed to support the proximity it once denied.

Our approach proposes phased inhabitation of the wall itself, instantly beginning the infectious growth that will lead to the corrosion of the walls capacity to be a divider and isolator.

We choose this project because we are very concerned by a world that shines away from the responsibility of preserving negative iconography, their sites and the vague terrains that occur around objects of division. The responses which tower believe resonate in the most meaningful way add and retain. Adding is progress because it's important to push past hesitant fear overcoming trauma, retention of the contextual artefacte to be used in educational and other practices brings reference and compreahension to the people, materials objects and dimensions of history. Over preservation without (re)development or (re)inhabitation hinders progress because the void is a gap between rather than a bridge to bond communities nearby and stiffens plans for those yet to come. We consider the wall a potential instrument as well as an artifact; an integral member in both the physical form and historical development of the region.

(re)inhabit 

This approach proposes phased inhabitation of the wall itself, instantly beginning the infectious growth that will lead to the corrosion of the walls capacity to be a divider and isolator. The walls retention is partial and temporal semicolon the development of the infection sequence will allow the linearity of the wall to be retained, it's qualities as a barrier will be dissolved into the mass of development. 

Infection

The 400 plus miles of wall are converted into a rainwater collection system. Parasitic communities are established around wells, built from the remnants of demolished or depopulated sites; using the wall as structure for the buildings, the water as the foundation for their independence. 

Identity

UNICEF, the Red Cross and organizations that empower establish anchors within these communities relaying health, education, shelter, and employment services to both sides of the wall, focused on the isolated or dependent. 

(re)occupation

The construction of the wall led to the destruction or relocation of several communities which we hope to offer the chance for (re)occupying their domain as well as allowing new growth to flourish in the region. The communities that grow within and around it will be catalysts for role reversal by (re)occupying the object of division. Though the current symbolism of the wall is about division, it's future role could be a living monument, a testament to the progressive political and social reform, and the conscious acknowledgment of the past, it's tensions, and it's emotions.