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

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.