Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency


Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency is an architectural studio and a residency program based in Beit Sahour, Palestine. DAAR's work combines spatial interventions, theoretical writings and collective learning. DAAR is dedicated to architectural experimentations on the reuse and transformation of colonial architecture, settlements, military bases, 1948 cleansed Palestinian villages, primarily in Palestine.
DAAR was founded in 2007 in Beit Sahour near Bethlehem by Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal and Eyal Weizman. The ideas that have been developed and disseminated throughout the region and abroad via exhibitions, seminars, videos and publications. Dozens of local and international architects are allied with the institute. Furthermore, it works together with a large number of artists, film makers and activists. The architectural studio and art residency was established with the aim of engaging with a complex set of architectural problems centered on one
of the most difficult dilemmas of political practice: how to act both propositionally and critically in an environment in which the political force fields, as complex as they may be, are so dramatically skewed. Are interventions at all possible? How can we find an “autonomy of practice” that is both critical and transformative?

Prizes

In 2010, the Institute was honored with a Prince Claus Award, a major cultural development award from the Netherlands. The jury rewards its work "for introducing a non-traditional approach to development in conflict and post-conflict situations, for providing valuable speculation on the future realities of disputed territories, for its critical challenge to outdated urban planning theories based on a more peaceful world, and for highlighting the role of architecture highlighting the role of architecture and visualisation in creating and altering the frontiers of reality." DAAR was nominated for the Curry Stone Design Price, the Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Artist Award, the New School's Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics, the Chrnikov Prize.

Exhibitions

DAAR projects have been published and exhibited in various venues including the Venice Biennale, Home Works in Beirut, the Istanbul Biennial, the Bozar in Brussels, NGBK in Berlin, Sharjah Biennale, the Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, Architekturforum Tirol in Innsbruck, the Tate in London, the Oslo Triennial, the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Teaching

DAAR's members have taught lectured and published internationally including a term as guest professors at the Berlage Institute, Bir Zeit University, Bard-Al Quds, Goldsmiths, and other places.
Alessandro Petti is currently Professor in Architecture and Social Justice at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.

Book

In 2013, DAAR published 'Architecture after Revolution' with the Berlin-based publisher Strenberg Press. The work presented in this book is an invitation to undertake an urgent architectural and political thought experiment: to rethink today's struggles for justice and equality not only from the historical perspective of revolution, but also from that of a continued struggle for decolonization; consequently, to rethink the problem of political subjectivity not from the point of view of a Western conception of a liberal citizen but rather from that of the displaced and extraterritorial refugee. You will not find here descriptions of popular uprising, armed resistance, or political negotiations, despite these of course forming an integral and necessary part of any radical political transformation. Instead, the authors present a series of provocative projects that try to imagine “the morning after revolution.”