In the latest episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, recorded at the end of last year, Fatina Abreek-Zubiedat spoke to me about her new book, A Territory in Conflict: Eras of Development and Urban Architecture in Gaza, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
The Gaza Strip was formed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and served to accommodate fleeing refugees. Until 1967 Administered by Egypt, Israel's occupation of the region after the Six Day War saw settlement building and military governance, till in 2005 it withdrew and Hamas took control. But the story of Gaza’s form – it’s spatial and material history - isn’t just one of conflict, but really an interplay of competing forces, ideas and identities.
Fatina’s is an extraordinary book, really, and quite other as a piece of history writing, made more pertinent now that so much of the material history of this strange and embattled place needs making again.
The book is linked above. Fatina is Assistant Professor and Head of the Spaces-in-Transition Lab at Tel Aviv University. She is on Facebook and Insta.
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Music credits: Bruno Gillick
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