YARA SHARIF & NASSER GOLZARI: Subver-City: the Green Urban Lab typology

After the devastating war on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09, which left most of it in ruins, we took up the challenge of trying to think how Gazans could manage to reconstruct their city under such conditions. The presentation discusses the development of a new typology we have called the Green Urban Lab. The Lab explores creative ways to stitch together the fragmented urban landscape using speculative and live projects. In what we call the ‘Absurd-City’ we take advantage of the blurred boundaries between the street, the block and the room to rethink the notion of home and domesticity. In our proposed intervention to create the ‘Subver-city’, we envisage the ‘Green Urban Lab’ acting as a threshold between private and public space: a means to offer alternative ways for Gaza residents to engage in ‘self-help’, hinting at possible alternative forms of reconstruction.

Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari are practising architects at NG Architects and Senior Lecturers at the University of Westminster. Their current research by design has won the 2017 RIBA’s President Award for research (commendation).

When: 15 March 2018, 13.00–14.00

Where: Erskine Room, 5th Floor

The Architecture Research Forum is a seminar series hosted by the Architecture + Cities Research Group where staff present work-in-progress for discussion.

ALL WELCOME