The Palestinian scale: reflections on socio-spatial practices inside the camp

h. 14.00-17.00 | Online

Organized
The Series of seminars "The camp: researching violence, exclusion and temporariness" are part of the Urban and Regional Development PhD program and are organized by Prof. Camillo Boano.

Seminar description
Mass displacement and refuge have become two conditions affecting global geographies, seas and societies, which has prompted writers and scholars to term it the “new normal.” Yet, there is nothing normal about a global system which forces mass waves of violent displacement, and further, undermines their potential for refuge and livelihood elsewhere. In her talk, Samar will reflect upon the Palestinian displacement, which has been in protraction for over seventy two years. She will illustrate the evolution of the architectural scale inside the Palestinian camp, with a focus on Burj el Barajneh camp in Lebanon. Further, she will present real examples from the camp field that demonstrate the various modes of architectural practices -scale-making, and the social, economic and political agency the Palestinian architectural scale has provided for its camp inhabitants. At a critical time of mass displacement that global communities are facing today, the talk is meant to offer insights into how displaced families and communities negotiate their refuge and livelihood utilizing the most intimate element of their lives; that of space.

Speaker
Samar Maqusi is a post-doctoral researcher at the Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London (UCL), working with the RELIEF centre (UCL) on a project in Lebanon, where she is researching modes of vitality in the camp and in the city. An architect and urban specialist in international development, including urban design and development in conflict areas. In 2008, Samar moved to Jordan to work with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) where she oversaw the Shelter Rehabilitation programme. She obtained her PhD from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. In addition, she is involved in documentary film-making, spatial installations and have exhibited her work and photography in London and the US.

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Seminar series description
The camp is emerging at the crossroads of urban studies, architecture, geography, anthropology and humanitarian practice, reflecting both the spatialisation of biopolitics and the urbanization of emergency. Camp studies have expanded recently and have been codified merging humanitarian practice with various urban dimensions, putting knowledge, protocols in crisis.
This seminar series "The camp: researching violence, exclusion and temporariness" is intended to offer a reflection on the dispositif of the camp reflecting on the tensions between permanence and temporariness, exception and normalization, politicization and depoliticization. The below series of seminars are part of the Urban and Regional Development PhD program but open to everyone who wish to attend and contribute and are set out to initiate a collective and transdisciplinary discussion to engage in such specific site of enquiry, struggle and subjectivation. Registration is needed.

Seminar series program
12.01.21 | 14.00 - 17.00 (GMT + 1)
The politics of inhabitation
Nasser Abourahme | Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York University, NY, US

19.01.21 | 14.30 - 17.30 (GMT + 1)
Refugee Heritage
Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti | DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Research)

26.01.21 | 14.00 - 17.00 (GMT + 1)
Spatial violations: reflections on socio-spatial practices inside Palestinian camps
Samar Maqusi | University College London, UK

09.02.21 | 14.00 - 17.00 (GMT + 1)
Talking camps: space, community and ‘the urban’
Wan Sophonpanich | Global CCM Cluster Coordinator, International Organisation for Migration

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To join the class
camillo.boano@polito.it