A story of revive throw art : Qalandia village

The project aims to revive the old village of Qalandia, by transforming it into an artistic village, through working on several layers. The first layer was about reusing the old houses in the town, as well as adding new masses to provide a working space for artists to linking them with the project. The second level of the project was an arts academy located next to the old town, where the architectural massing was in harmony with the site through the ground floor being a platform on which the rest of the project rises Stone was used to allow architectural visual connections with the old town. As for the first and second floors, the architectural massing proportional was taken from the old town, and it consists of three interconnected masses linked by winged movements connected to an external hill whose proportion is less than the proportions of the blocks. It is a planted building representing the Palestinian “Hakoura”, the traditional garden of the old Palestinian house. As for the masses, they had three colours, each symbolizing a different kind of art. The orange blocks contained the arts that required movement, such as dance, performing arts, and Palestinian folk ensembles, the turquoise blocks contained vocal arts such as music, and the fuchsia blocks contained visual arts, which are plastic arts. Several elements were used in the formation of the facades, taken from the traditional architectural elements of the neighboring old town, namely the arch and the small openings that were used in a modern way that mimics the art of the Academy of Arts. As for the basement floor, sunken were used to provide lighting and to allow visual contact with the viewer at this level. The basement contained arts workshops for Palestinian arts such as olive wood carving, weaving, and others.

The project was carried out on the area of the old town and the surrounding spaces. There were four main entrances and three public squares, the western entrance for students of the academy and the northern entrances for visitors to the old city, and the eastern entrance was a community square in the village of Qalandia. As for the squares in the project, the Academy Square was the main Plaza, and the western square of the Hukia’ Palace dedicated to Palestinian festivals, and the shading elements in it were taken from the structure of the Academy, and the eastern square dedicated to the community in the town of Qalandia, Landscape elements were also used to define the entrances, as they contain violet-colored Jacaranda trees, as well as Palestinian artistic drawings on the walls to accompany the viewer in his journey to the old town. As for the urban fabric in the town, the project was the first stop for ideas in the town, and there was a proposal to have Linear Park on the line separating areas C and areas of the Jerusalem governorate to support the Palestinian presence there.