Al-Addasseh - Jerusalem Urban Resilience Design Studio

international urban planning workshop
2011 / with the International Peace and Cooperation Centre (IPCC), UN-HABITAT, Pie Architecture, OMA, Design for London, Birzeit Unversity, Al-Quds University, Omar Yousef and various others.


The 2011 IPCC Summer Design Studio brought together an international team of professionals, academics and students from the fields of architecture and planning to develop the International Peace and Cooperation Centre (IPCC)'s plans for a 2,500 home regeneration of the Al Addasseh neighbourhood of East Jerusalem.

The studio offered an opportunity to exchange knowledge and methodologies from around the world to help approach some of the complex planning issues in Jerusalem.

It ran for a total of seven weeks produced two alternative masterplans along with detailed documentation about the processes, ideas and precedents that influenced them. The work was developed with the input of local architects and planners through a number of presentations, crits and discussions that took place throughout the project.

One scheme focused on the development of a brief for a masterplan that supported a form of incremental urbanism, rooted in the sensitivities of the landscape and existing community - the team made large scale ‘experiential’ drawings of the site, recording the place in minute detail, and embedded themselves within the local Palestinian culture.

The alternative scheme sought to 'sample' successful urban environments from other cities and transpose them onto the site in a propositional manner, to see what new relationships could be cultivated between existing conditions and new development.

The summer studio was a pilot project for a permanent design studio which will continue to research and analyse planning in Jerusalem and help to broaden and develop IPCC's planning knowledge and capability. The studio was organised in partnership with UN-HABITAT.