Abstract:

In Al-Walaja, a historic Palestinian village on Jerusalem’s southern edge where building permits are nearly impossible and drones watch from above, architecture becomes an act of survival. This project proposes a lightweight communal platform hidden beneath trees assembled collectively, dismantled easily, and leaving no trace.

Within a landscape of surveillance and restriction, it creates an invisible civic infrastructure where coexistence grows quietly.

Developed through a year of engagement with the village, its people, and the terrain, the design relies on local resources and shared labor. Construction aimed to happen at night born from necessity, fear, and resilience turning the simple act of building into a form of collective resistance.

The tree becomes an architectural partner: its canopy conceals and protects, its presence anchors the community. Beneath it, a flat wooden plane forms a rare stable ground, a place to sit, cook, gather, and imagine together.

Each unit can replicate across the village, creating a dispersed network of shaded meeting points. In a context where legality denies belonging, the right to build transforms into the right to gather.

This architecture, light and temporary yet full of meaning, suggests that coexistence in places of division does not announce itself loudly; it takes root quietly, in the shade.