It wasn’t long after the ceasefire in Gaza was announced that Gazan Palestinians began returning home to rubble: 33.6 million tonnes of it. Though Gaza has undergone multiple bombardments, three times between 2008 and 2014 alone, this last year has seen the largest widespread destruction of homes, infrastructure and public spaces. The process of rebuilding is constrained by Israeli restrictions on imported concrete and steel, leading to the use of alternative building materials. Palestinians have turned to mud bricks, recycled rubble and other creative solutions. The slow pace of reconstruction has forced some to live in temporary housing, such as tents and semi-permanent shelters, for years.
In the face of displacement and destruction, Palestinian designers, architects and artists are weaving resilience into their craft, using design as both a form of preservation and a vision for the future. Palestinian design has a specific language, markedly distinct from the wider region, though there are elements which connect it to its neighbours. Palestine is one of the places where the built environment and retaining indigenous heritage is most contested. Restrictions on building permits, as well as land theft and illegal Israeli settlements, make Palestinian architecture a creative act of future-building and resistance to erasure.
Since Israel controls the flow of imports and exports from Palestinian communities, designers and artisans are limited in the materials they can use, and are forced to invent ways of adapting ancient crafts to accommodate restrictions. Thus, for Palestinian creatives, design extends beyond aesthetic attributes and translates into a method for storytelling, a bridge between heritage and contemporary identity, and a material means of supporting local economies. In Palestine and across the diaspora, where the urban and cultural landscape is often marked by a need for reconstruction through generations, a range of designers are reimagining tradition, crafting spaces and objects that embody both memory and possibility.
For most Palestinians, resistance is not an armed pursuit. The road to liberation – or at least, their daily expressions of dignity – is in a humble stitch, as is the case for many Palestinian women whose forms of resistance traditionally lie in domestic crafts such as weaving and embroidery. As Rachel Dedman, the author of Stitching the Intifada: Embroidery and Resistance in Palestine, puts it, “Embroidery (or tatreez) is much more than heritage. It is Palestinian life. Although it constitutes the humblest of practices in its repetitive binding of thread to fabric, embroidery embodies resilience.”
Lara Salous is an architect, interior designer and furniture researcher based in Ramallah, Palestine. “After practicing for nine years, I found that we are disconnected from our inherited interiors and locally sourced materials,” Salous tells me. “I decided to merge it all, to take inspiration from Palestine, its rich colour palette and visual identity.” Salous founded the brand Woolwoman as a means of reviving traditional craft practices, blending wool interiors, locally handmade furniture, carpentry and interior design to create furniture and home furnishings. Woolwoman works in collaboration with women located in occupied Palestinian territories, and the brand launched its first wool stool collection in 2021 to sell in local galleries.
A key inspiration for Salous is the Palestinian Bedouin woman, “the architect of her home, who creates a sense of haven”. Salous tells me how Bedouin women carefully design and weave their tents, “providing a sturdy shelter for the family. Inside, the woven rug spreads gentle warmth, framing the family's daily life.” Another inspiration is the utilitarian aspect of local organic wool, particularly how wool is transformed from simple origins into sturdy homeware furniture, ranging from rugs, mattresses, pillows and blanket covers to agricultural and pastoral bags. She’s also fascinated by the way wool can repair, “adding another layer of significance to its use”, says Salous.
Not only is the material of significance, but the method of converting raw wool fibres into a continuous yarn “is a spectacular rhythmic and silent movement”, Salous explains. “After the installation of the looms, the collective working and singing of the family members create a sense of unity and domiciliary. Weaving not only a rug but infusing intangible remnants of our cultural heritage.”
The Israeli Separation Barrier and hundreds of checkpoints throughout the West Bank have dramatically altered Palestinian life. The Qalandiya Checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem, for example, disrupts urban continuity between Palestinian cities and Jerusalem, leading to the growth of a separate, informal economy and housing sector around the checkpoint. Ramallah has expanded rapidly as Palestinians who cannot access Jerusalem relocate there, changing its skyline with new high-rise buildings and commercial districts.
The Old City of Hebron is also heavily restricted by Israeli military presence. Some areas are blocked off, creating ‘ghost streets’ where Palestinian movement is limited. This has led to the adaptation of urban spaces, such as building-enclosed walkways, with locals placing metal grids above streets to protect themselves from settler violence.
As a way of resisting violent Israeli insertions in the Palestinian landscape, Woolwoman works to maintain a network between Ramallah and Bedouin communities in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, where Salous tells me shepherds are violently attacked on a daily basis by Israeli settlers. “In Woolwoman we build a woven net between our threatened territories, although now it has been getting harder because of the Israeli checkpoints, Israeli settler attacks and sudden closures by the Israeli army that make it dangerous to commute to get the locally sourced materials.” Nevertheless, Woolwoman continues to support its local network for the sake of promoting cultural heritage as well as providing material support and income for artisans, at a time when Israel is suspending its work permits for Palestinians.
Supporting locals through weaving and embroidery is a common practice, transforming the act of traditional art and design from an aesthetic pursuit to a practical means of sustaining livelihoods. For artist Jordan Nassar, it’s a more important time than ever to find work for those Palestinian craftspeople who have been able to remain at home in Palestine. Though Nassar is part of the diaspora and is based in New York, he creates artworks in many mediums, all based on the traditional method of embroidery. “It’s important for me to keep having work for them to do, so they can worry about one less thing – their income” he tells me. “Being able to offer them any sort of stability has been important since I started doing this, and continues to be.”
Nassar’s practice involves researching traditional Palestinian embroidery by looking at archival and historical examples, and he combines different designs to suit any given work. Sometimes, he uses seemingly traditional compositions, and other times he adds his own personal style, “filling the space with patterns”, he explains. His second creative outlet is painting, which he translates across embroidery patterns, hybridising two art forms.
“Any use of traditional Palestinian crafts will work towards preserving our heritage” Nassar explains. “Being inventive and creative is tricky, because at times I feel like I'm not really doing it if I don't do it the traditional way. But then again, if it is a living cultural heritage – which it is – then it isn't set and fixed. It can evolve, it can expand, it can meander. And I, as a Palestinian in the diaspora, can be part of that process. This is both challenging and rewarding. It is an honour.”
On an emotional level, Nassar admits it can feel “useless” or superficial to make art for museums “when this is being done to Palestine. I have a lot of friends who have expressed this kind of feeling”, he tells me. “But I think, as artists, we make art. The important thing for me is to allow my feelings and my thoughts to enter my work. Gaza has been in the work for the past 16 months, and will continue to be. As Palestine has been, for me, in the work the whole time.”
Design is always political, but perhaps especially so in Palestine. Rawabi is a planned city in the West Bank, designed as a sustainable piece of contemporary Palestinian urbanism. It was based on a vision of economic and social independence, with modern housing, commercial centres and green spaces. However, the lack of access to infrastructure such roads and water for Palestinians has shown how deeply urban planning is entangled with the constraints imposed by occupation.
Palestinian refugee settlements such as Jenin Camp, Dheisheh in Bethlehem and Balata in Nablus have evolved from temporary tents into dense, permanent urban spaces. Despite their permanence, their architecture often includes symbols of return, such as murals, keys symbolising homes lost in the war of 1948 and maps of historical Palestine. Narrow alleyways and self-built homes reflect both necessity and a strong communal identity. Palestinian urbanism is deeply shaped by sociopolitical challenges, from the impact of checkpoints and military control to the role of reconstruction and architecture as a tool of identity and resistance.
Brothers Yousef and Elias Anastas are partners at AAU ANASTAS architects, co-founders of Local Industries, co-founders of Radio alHara and co-founders of The Wonder Cabinet (perhaps the busiest cultural duo working in Palestine today). Local Industries focuses on tying links between crafts and architecture, from furniture design to “territorial exploration”. The studio advocates for a contemporary use of structural stone in Palestinian architecture. “We have been particularly interested in the politics of stone use for low- carbon-footprint structures, more resilient cities and more responsible quarries,” the Anastas brothers say.
For designers such as the brothers, innovation in the sense of technology “is not really central. It is a beautiful tool that sometimes drastically changes the way we see, represent and design our work.” The brothers believe that technological tools should remain tools, and that they should be used politically. “They are nothing by themselves, we have to shape innovation to suit our political aspirations in architecture, and this means, for us, using innovation to preserve cultural traditions all the while inscribing them in a universalist realm.”
The Wonder Cabinet, launched in 2024, is a spatial initiative in Bethlehem that gathers a community of artisans and artists in technical and artistic realms, with the aim of producing a culture of “global provincialism”, as the brothers call it. The Wonder Cabinet can be seen as a direct reaction to the creeping annexation of Palestinian land-space, such as in the West Bank, as well as the constant forced expulsion of Palestinians from their lands that is happening at a frighteningly increased rate today. The Wonder Cabinet’s annual residency Sounds of Places Forum aims to map out space and land through “sonic aesthetics”; it is a living archive of auditory memory with the hopes of retaining connections to contested places through sonic design.
Yousef and Elias strive to break down the contemporary argument for not using traditional techniques of stone construction in Palestine. “This is associated with a form of consumerism and short-term profit-based economies that have prevailed in the second half of the 21st century,” they explain. “As a result, buildings are not meant to last beyond a couple of decades. Modern societies value the heritage of historic structures but do not look at building structures for future heritage.” In this context, sustainability is at odds with durability.
The brothers hope to convince us that rooted craftsmanship is an essential architectural political tool. “Stone, in that context, is a material that calls for a renewed relationship to construction labour, one that would reconcile our ability to understand our history and be able to foresee our heritage, one where sustainability is not exclusively measured with alienated criteria, one that is able to resist supremacist systems of domination and aspire to build political aspirations through architecture,” they continue.
Similarly for Salous, architecture is not about megastructures, but about “our Palestinian immaterial societal structures”, she explains. “Our concept designs originated from three main pillars: the woman, the wool and the loom. All merged craftsmanship, materiality and rhythmic weaving movements. We transform primitive interior elements into contemporary furniture versions in our homes.”
Through her art practice, Salous believes Palestinians can raise their voices and visibility, “to bring attention and raise awareness to Palestine and to the continuous occupation that has lasted for more than 75 years, of the injustice, displacement, killing and imprisonment of Palestinian people.” At Salous’ recent solo show We Became the Land in Madrid in 2024, she displayed artworks drawing attention to the seizure of pasture in Palestinian lands, such as in the video piece In Our Vines. In Around Their Hands (2023) and What Remains (2022), she hopes to “revive an almost lost craft that we inherited from our grandmothers”, referring to the ancient tradition of tatreez and wool weaving.
What becomes apparent through practices such as that of Nassar, Salous and the Anastas brothers is that education and dissemination of resources is key to ensuring a design heritage beyond the present day, as well as linking the diaspora and global communities to local Palestinian makers. Yousef and Elias’ Wonder Cabinet aims at becoming an experimental education platform tying links across disciplines “as a way to produce new forms of knowledge that are able to react to the conditions we are going through, whether locally in Palestine or in a wider context”, they say. They hope to expand the space into an experimental art and architecture school in the next five years. “Learning and awareness play a crucial role in reviving nearly lost heritage, especially when teaching young students how to connect our present world with a love for the land and for Palestine”, says Salous.
Above all, the goal remains clear through the diversity of design practices and through the variety of mediums applied: “the highest hope would be for a free Palestine for everyone, the end to the apartheid and occupation and blockade and violence and segregation” Nassar says. “Everything is on this stage set by the occupation and subjugation of our people. I can only imagine what our design, our architecture, our writing, our art would be if we could just do it in the context of freedom.”
This article is taken from Anima Issue 3, to purchase a copy or subscribe head here