Thursday, January 5, 2012

Palestinian Museum in Birzeit

by Joel Wallace




Below is an excerpt from the World Architecture News and is presenting a large scale museum project in Palestine. With crunch for thesis development already here, this project could set as a nice example of masterplanning, design, and cultural significance that most of our topics may require attention to. Designing to respect the past, present, and future are what drives our biggest challenges and projects like this are a good reference for how this may begin to be accomplished.

Through an extensive selection process The Welfare Association is intending to appoint architects to masterplan and design the Palestinian Museum which will be located in Birzeit in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The selected architects will be responsible for masterplanning a phased development of the Palestinian Museum on a very important site within the overall campus of Birzeit University, near to Ramallah.

The Palestinian Museum will be a unique cultural project and is being developed to become the primary and authoritative source of knowledge and new thinking about Palestinian history, culture and contemporary life. Such a space does not currently exist. The Museum is conceived as a thematic rather than simply a narrative museum, in which many different aspects of Palestinian history and culture will be explored in innovative and revealing ways, creating debate and discussion about both past and contemporary themes.

The Palestinian Museum project has been in gestation for over a decade and has gone through a number of different stages of debate, thinking and rethinking. After a great deal of internal discussion and external consultation, the Welfare Association is now totally confident that the overall strategy and concept direction allow for the Palestinian Museum to be built.

Because of the nature of the Palestinian reality, where a majority of Palestinians are today living outside historic Palestine (i.e. Israel and the Occupied Territories); and because of the barriers and checkpoints erected by Israel which prevent the freedom of movement of Palestinians living under occupation (and prevent most Palestinians in the Diaspora from even entering any part of their country), the Museum is conceived as a hub which, in addition to catering to the population in the West Bank, will also serve a network of branches and associated centres, sharing with them information, research, web-based material and touring exhibitions, as well as human resources and expertise.
www.worldarchitecturenews.com

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