The Anastas brothers – Elias and Yousef – represent the fourth generation of a family of architects operating in a place, Palestine, where designing has always meant not only resisting but, above all, looking forward.
Luca Molinari
Hi, I’m very happy to be here with the brothers Anastas. They look like a rock band. I mean, by the way, I was thinking before, there’s this new wave of rock music from Palestine. So here I am in Milano, there you are in Bethlehem. Thank you very much for agreeing to be part of this choice.
Bearing in mind that many of our friends don’t know much about your work, can you explain your story? Basically, I would like to start with your story. Now, you are in Bethlehem, but you started in Paris. I would like you to introduce yourselves, explaining about your office, your activities and your background.
Elias Anastas
Thank you for having us, it’s a real honour and pleasure to chat with you. We come from a family of architects. Both our parents are architects, our grandfather was an architect, our great-grandfather was an architect so it’s a whole generation of architects.
L.M.
It’s a nightmare!
E.M.
A total nightmare! We grew up and spent a lot of our childhood on construction sites and in the studio of our parents. So we were already in a kind of architecture mode since we were very young. Then very naturally, we decided to study architecture, both of us. I studied architecture in Paris, Youssef too, and Youssef pursued civil engineering in Paris as well. We started working between Paris and Palestine. We were trying to look at opportunities for projects and how to work in between the two places, as well as what brings these two places together. We were also really interested in different skills through architecture.
In 2012, we won a competition to build a music school, a music conservatory: the National Music Conservatory in Bethlehem. The way we designed the building was to think about the public space that it would generate. So it was more about the empty space, the void that the building created, rather than the building itself. Towards the end of the construction process, we got a phone call from the director of the conservatory who told us that the budget for furniture had vanished due to fluctuation in the currency, etc. We had to look at other ways of furnishing the building with a very limited amount of money.
We decided to work with the network of people that were involved in the construction of the building in order to generate a whole collection of furniture that would fit into the architecture of the space. It ended up being the most incredible experience of the whole project. We transformed the construction site into a site for experimentation with materials to design furniture, chairs, tables and desks. It really affected the way we think about architecture and how we look at different scales and materials.
We decided to create a department within our studio called Local Industries that focuses on design and art production. Progressively, we have developed a particular interest in peculiar ways of using available materials. In Palestine we have a bylaw whose origins date back to the British mandate which states that all buildings have to be built with stone. At the beginning of last century stone was very dominant as a construction material and very central to the way we think about architecture from a material point of view. Since then the use of reinforced concrete invaded the construction world, but also, aligning with the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the use of the material shifted from being used as a structural material to being pushed at the background of the construction process as a cladding for concrete structures. As a reaction to this “misuse” of the material we started investigating the possibilities of working with local masons as well with very important stone quarries in Palestine in order to reposition the use of stone in a very noble way, trying to respond to the global conditions of architecture.
This research aspect led us to develop the capacity and the possibility of working on a kind of experimental scale. As a result we started getting commissions for museums, galleries and spaces to create experimentations in stone. The first one was a stone installation that was commissioned by the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2017, and what was really interesting for us was not only looking at stone as a material, but to respond to very specific architectural contexts. The V&A installation focuses on the relationship between architecture and nature in Palestine and how this duality was fundamental to the way architecture was shaping the city. In Palestine the question of the land is very anchored in the minds, the relationship with nature is fundamental. The ongoing occupation of Palestine attempts to disrupt this sense of belonging and de facto generates an architecture that consumes the territory.
While losing references of historic building know-hows, architecture is being used as a way to mark properties, spaces in order for them to avoid Israeli expropriation and annexation. In March 2020 during the global lockdown, we co-founded with a few friends an online radio station, Radio alHara that is a politically-aware sonic wave.
Radio alHara progressively grew around a community of listeners and producers that regularly gather through the sonic space to protest oppressions, injustices, around the world.
A year ago we opened the Wonder Cabinet which is a not-for-profit organisation that brings all these facets of the studio together. It brings the different initiatives in which we are involved into the public sphere. The Wonder Cabinet brings together people working in different realms, spanning from music, food, architecture, artisanship, and sound to try to formulate new forms of knowledge through cross-pollination of specific respective practices.We think of the Wonder Cabinet as the basis or the foundations of a future experimental art and architecture school.
L.M.
The title of the cover for the magazine with your interview will be Community which I think fits in very well with the fact that you are dealing with a community which is made up of different characters and points of view, and disciplines willing to generate a let’s say, cultural and also a political project. You are using the word political because I feel that clearly architecture is politics and even more in the land you are living in. Now you are in Bethlehem, you are in the middle of a terrible dramatic turmoil and so I think that every act, even creative and intellectual is fully political because it’s related to a community which is suffering and which is also I think called to define its own identity in those times and so this I think is very important. So in relation to I mean the radio, the radio is really fun, it’s very interesting and then now the Bethlehem Wonder Cabinet are both ways to define new ways of spending time together and opening up discussions. So which are the, let’s say, key words, what are your ways of being political in this moment through these actions?
Yousef Anastas
Our way of being political. Yes. I think that with hindsight radio alHara or the Wonder Cabinet or the architecture studio are all linked through this idea that there’s nothing really planned in advance but everything is based on the desire of exploration, of exchanging with the community. And the community around those projects is not limited to people, it’s also land, territory, nature, and everything that happens around the environment of those initiatives. In that sense, the idea of exchanging with that community has been very fruitful for every section of our activity.
Radio alHara has approximately 350 residents playing monthly shows. The first online protest that we organised on the radio was called Fil Mish Mish, it lasted for 80+ hours and was initially a protest against annexation of even more parts of the West Bank by Israel. What strook us most was the agility with which two hyper contextual situations in completely different locations in the world end up sharing struggles. It immediately strengthens each condition at a global level, generating an unforeseen moment of solidarity. In a way, this resonated manifold with our architectural studio and in particular in ways contextual practices of architecture can be linked at a global level to rewrite a much richer non linear, non supremacist history of architecture. Communal solidarity has the ability to suddenly turn a local situation into a global concern.
This has influenced our practice of architecture. It flips the understanding of theoretical and empirical practices. In some cases, a collection of peculiar architectural practices are at the basis of a theory. This is even more true in the case of stone architecture that has been as much fed by theories than by empirical methods. It has largely been leaning on the idea that a structure requires a predefined perception that can only be based on experiences of long-lasting great construction sites. Stone architecture and the process of making architecture are intertwined processes that are constantly fed by previous trials as much as challenging existing principles.
When we look deeper into the techniques that were used by the Crusaders in Jerusalem for instance, we realise that some of the techniques were imported and some others were found in situ. Those techniques were then re-exported. You can find some churches in the South of France that were built a few years after some churches in Jerusalem and that have similar, very specific techniques found in churches in Jerusalem. It becomes an enriching discourse about know-how and making knowledge in different places. In that sense our work is political because it challenges a sort of a typical way of observing our common environments.
L.M.
I like the fact that you are describing it as a form of decolonization, concrete as a form of Western colonization, let’s say, and stone as a way to decolonize the practice through an all-round technical and critical awareness. So can you tell me more about that, because I think this is a very interesting way of discussing decolonization in a very specific context.
Y.A.
Yes. The British mandate bylaw set within the masterplan of William Mc Lean in 1918 officially intended to create a unified built environment but de facto it had different political impacts on the city itself. Everything that was built out of stone but that was in the outskirts of Jerusalem, was considered inside Jerusalem. Everything that wasn’t built out of stone, areas that were in Jerusalem were excluded from Jerusalem’s population, having an impact on its demography and the politics of claiming of the city. Both the material itself and the way it was used for building became a political tool and a territorial tool.
Today it also has an environmental impact since all stone quarries are located in areas in the West Bank called Area C. Area C is an area that is controlled by the Israeli administration and security forces but they’re Palestinian lands and in those areas the Palestinian authority has no jurisdiction so what happens is that these areas are left a bit wild, so it’s a very spoiled landscape. It’s very polluted, some villages around stone quarries suffer from extreme dust, creating quite considerable diseases. These stone quarries feed the Palestinian market, the Israeli market and the international market. In that sense, so-called environmentally friendly constructions in Israel, are built on account of this happening on the other side. There’s a sort of a long history of stone use that de facto links the way of making architecture and the political situation, and with time, the British bylaw that was once only applied to Jerusalem became generalised to cover practically all cities in Palestine, still today. Since it’s a very systematic law, everything is built out of concrete today and clad with stone. All the buildings end up looking alike; they’re all the same but they’re all clad with stone and when we started this research project it was mainly a reaction against this or towards this tendency of misusing the available stone.
L.M.
I was thinking and I was impressed because I didn’t know that you were coming from three generations of architects, let’s say you are the third or the fourth generation?
E.A./Y.A.
Third, no fourth generation.
L.M.
This is very interesting because the fourth generation means more or less one century. Can you tell me more about the three previous generations? They were working in Palestine, they were working in the same land, in Bethlehem which is original from this year. So how can you look at the work of your ancestors in relation also to your work? What is the level of continuity and the level of, let’s say, the break and the changes in relation to that.
E.A.
One of the things that for me is quite incredible to look at, is that our grandfather, the father of my father, was an architect, but he was also a surveyor. So there was this idea that even the way they would speak about someone who was an architect, that person would also be an engineer. In Arabic, it’s an engineer. So he had this range of different forms of knowledge that are embedded within the architectural practice. At that time he was practising between the 1940s and 1970s in Bethlehem, the city was still very small and he was planning roads and was very much invested in territories, and he was really defining how cities are connected to each other. So, many of the roads that he designed were roads that were going from Bethlehem to other parts of the land that are no longer accessible to us today.
That’s one aspect and the second aspect that I think is really interesting is that the generation before him were architects but our great grandfather was a stonemason as well so he was an architect but as well working a lot with stone as a mason, as a carver of stone. Now this interest in stone is coming back to our generation.
L.M.
Would you like to say something more?
Y.A.
What is maybe common in between those generations is an emancipation towards the establishment in Palestine, whether with the Ottomans, with the British, and now with the Israeli occupation, there are different ways of practicing architecture. I think that through the generations, there was a way of making architecture that wanted to free itself, become independent.
L.M.
The professional approach is a form of resistance and a way to be independent in relation to the commitment. I have known your work for many years and in terms of architecture, I have always been very much impressed by the special quality and the fact that you were working on something very smooth but very close to communities, a place that is very generous, able to host different kinds of life and activities. For me, this is one of the good characteristics of architecture today, being generous and being open to changes, and to be resilient sometimes, to work on that. And I remember the courthouse and the School of Music, but now probably also due to the situation, you are working on experimentation with stone. I remember the Biennale, your very good installation there, and also the V&A, I remember that, and many others. Considering the not easy situation, what are you working on in terms of architectural practice and researches?
E.A.
I think that we’re now at the 12th iteration of the stone matters research, and the last iteration was shown last month in Doha. The project investigates ribbed structures with stone inspired by the Gothic cathedrals that had the same vocabulary that was found in different parts of the Arab world. It’s a very interesting and pivotal moment for the studio because we are starting to implement projects, commissioned buildings with these techniques. We’re currently working on a museum competition that we won in Saudi Arabia in Al-Ola. It’s an underground tunnel that will be entirely built with one of the stone systems that we’ve been developing.
Y.A.
There’s a side of being in Palestine that is very difficult. Some things that we usually do in other countries without facing any kind of problems are very difficult to do here. Moving freely from one place to another or having access to materials, basic things is very difficult. It ends up being a situation that is very difficult to practice in, but at the same time it’s a place where you can experiment more than anywhere else. The scale of relationships between people in the society has remained domesticl. Although the city is getting bigger, those relationships are still preserved. You have access to artisanship, to know-hows, to ways of making that makes experimentation even easier. The Wonder Cabinet is all about this. This kind of experimental practice is very much linked to the community that’s around the Wonder Cabinet but which also speaks a global language.
L.M.
Absolutely. This is very important because I think that one of the responsibilities of architecture is dealing continuously with the idea of hope. We design something for tomorrow and without hope you don’t do anything. Dealing with hope means having a stronger civic and political responsibility regarding what we will do, and in the meantime, designing a community, I think, is important. So the Wonder Cabinet is a way of designing a network which is transnational somehow, and which is bringing people together around ideas, around the vision. And I think this is a very strong political act. It’s not a strong resistance, but it’s a strong job. Design is more than resistance. Design is looking forward, not just to resist.
E.A.
It’s still possible in Palestine to have access to artisans and craftsmanship that allow this level of experimentation. It’s true that it’s very present as well in different parts of the Mediterranean. It reminds me of a project that we started working on in 2019 right before the pandemic in Matera. It was a project that was commissioned by the city of Matera but that was put on standby right before production had to start because of the global pandemic. Since then we found these synergies in between the way you can have access to artisans and stone masons in Puglia and Basilicata in Italy and similar approaches technically. It’s also very similar on a human level.
Text by Luca Molinari
Captions and Photo credit (from top to bottom)
– Cover, AAU Anastas Portrait – photo by Sofia Lambrou
– Biennale – FG Hall C. 21
– Tiamat in Doha – Ph. Edmund Sumner
– Cremisan Opening
– ANAS-V+A – Ph. Edmund Sumner
– Wonder Cabinet – Ph. Mikaela Burstow
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