Concrete Conflicts: The Vicissitudes of an Ordinary Material in Modernizing Gaza City


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Date

2020

Publication Type

Journal Article

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Abstract

Working within the field of architecture in conflict zones, this article discusses two construction projects that heavily relied on concrete in Gaza city to reveal a collision between concrete’s reformative capacity in processes of modernization and the Israeli occupier’s agenda of “reformation” by concrete. The Israeli-designed and constructed Sheikh Radwan neighborhood was intended to rehabilitate Palestinian refugees and was supposed to silence their demands for the right to return. The Rashad A-Shawa Cultural Centre in Gaza, by contrast, was Gazan a public project that reflected the modernization of the city and attempted to reform its people out of a belief in architecture’s role in giving shape to the Palestinians’ struggle for national self-determination. The two juxtaposed cases highlight the centrality of concrete to Gaza’s urban history but also its conflicting discourses of modernization.

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Publication status

published

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Volume

48 (5)

Pages / Article No.

1173

Publisher

SAGE

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Subject

Israel–Palestine conflict; concrete; labor; urban; refugees

Organisational unit

09643 - Avermaete, Tom / Avermaete, Tom check_circle
02655 - Netzwerk Stadt u. Landschaft ARCH u BAUG / Network City and Landscape ARCH and BAUG

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