“Modernity, Octavio Paz says, is an exclusively Western concept that has no equivalent in other civilizations. The reason for this lies in the view of time that is peculiar to the West, by which time is regarded as being linear, irreversible, and progressive.” Hilda Heynan, Architecture and Modernity
The genesis of modernity in the Arab world, whether as logic or aesthetic, was in complete isolation from the historic and socio-economic conditions that produced the avant-garde project. While the moment of modernity gave rise to the notion of “Nation” state, it was also the moment of refuge and exile in the region; it can be seen as an inscription of a colonial effect onto space.
The project revisits the relationship of construction and land to time. Referencing the Palestinian refuge and exile, a temporariness that gradually transforms—or deforms—into permanence, where the notion of a linear time—as Paz described—doesn’t exist. As when you live in waiting, in suspension, the present tense is never now.
Understanding dwelling in temporariness is further complicated when juxtaposed with processes of modernization and modernity in the region, especially when it’s not isolated from the general discourse of modernity. De-territorialization and alienation were enhanced by the rationality of modernity and its different forms of architecture. But another level of de-territorialization appears when we live in temporariness, in refuge, in exile; we realize that even the poetic dwelling is lost. The different patterns of dwelling in temporariness are recollected and recognized as archetypes and know-hows that span geographically and territorially. This recollecting process takes the dilemma of building in temporariness into a further aggravated dilemma which is building, living and even dying in a state of suspension.
Those archetypes are then recreated and materialized, becoming a topographic realm forming an archeological site, or a record inscribed in the architecture of everyday life. By freezing a visual memory of a space then deconstructing it into angles, materials and shadows, another layer is revealed; regional references, alienation and attempts to unravel the unknown emerge in the context of processes of modernity-modernization in the host countries.
These fragments of spaces appear to be incomplete, a side effect to an aesthetic and a spectacle; fragments that are not only an extension of Palestinian refuge, but also part of the de- territorialization of the working class and migrant workers.
Saba Innab
