CULTIVATING HOPE: REBUILDING HOME, STREET, AND NEIGHBOURHOOD IN GAZA | AFG Studio - Cairo

HALA & AYA STUDIO
Sharing an understanding of architecture as a site to write, we came together in this studio to think of ways in which architecture and its pedagogies can inscribe—in the future— the stories of its narrators, the people of Gaza. The questions that outlined the purpose of the studio are by no means easy, nor were the complex paths that we followed as we devised the methods, tools, and fictions to address them. “How do we imagine a new future for Gaza?” we asked in the announcement in which we called for participants. Contrasting the brutal reality within which Gaza lives with a hopeful future demanded an exhaustive labour that was further exacerbated by our participants’ despair at retrieving the past. “But who said we want to imagine a new future... It is as simple as this: we want our lives back.”
For 17 days, we inhabited a room in the Tabu Centre in Nasr City, Cairo. Nasr City is a district known for its Palestinian population. “Tabu” is the name of the document that proves someone’s ownership of land. In the context of this new displacement, it symbolises the Palestinian right to return and reclaim their stolen property. Every day, the ten of us diligently attended to the studio and its design mandate. Despite the room's limited size, our consistent and friendly presence gave us the impression that it was gradually expanding. The room was not enlarged to the extent that Gaza's many pasts would suggest, but it was large enough to host the pourings from so many hearts, including our own. In such a difficult time when grief in its own right becomes a privilege that not everyone can access, architectural pedagogies—the cardboard, the photographs, the hesitant texts, and the pens and pencils—created a milieu of grief where Gaza’s past allowed us to glimpse how to find our way back.
The studio, entitled Cartographies of Self and Space: From Reflection to Renewal, was meticulously structured into three interwoven phases: personal storytelling through site-writing and emotional mapping; critical deconstruction of spatial narratives through dismantle mapping and speculative post-return scenarios; and ultimately, the conceptual design of resilient spatial futures for Gaza at multiple scales — home, street, neighborhood, and territory.
Every component of the curriculum was selected with extreme precision and ethical care. Understanding the profound impact of trauma on learning, the curriculum adopted a trauma-informed pedagogical approach, balancing critical rigour with empathetic engagement. Methodologies such as embodied mapping, narrative reconstruction, and speculative design to empower participants to reclaim agency over space, memory, and imagination.
Beyond skill development, the studio was conceived as a transformative platform: a space where displaced individuals could not only envision the physical reconstruction of their homeland, but also begin the slow, fragile process of personal and collective healing. By centering their own memories, emotions, and aspirations within the design process, participants were able to resist narratives of loss and erasure, asserting instead narratives of resilience and renewal.

Hala & Aya