All Things Urban

The Summer Lab Learning from Jerusalem / Al-Quds offers a critical framework of urban analysis, research and design focused on the built environment of the city. It aims to highlight the complexity of urban conflicts in Jerusalem not solely as a unique case, but rather as an arena that could be used for understanding urban conflicts elsewhere and possible agendas for their resolution. Through urban design research labs, tours, seminars and workshops with local and international scholars and activists taking place between the Hansen House (Talbiya) and various itineraries and locales in the city and its edge conditions, the program advances a series of inter-disciplinary and multi-scalar investigations into the processes and practices, formal and informal, which shape spaces, politics and everyday life in the city. In particular, we explore the opportunities of an urban project of the city, in the context of its various histories of colonization and governance. As a city that is at the very same time unified, divided, fragmented, contested, mixed, anti-, post- and neo-colonial, Jerusalem / Al-Quds presents a unique combination of urban conditions; It is a post-Ottoman city, bearing significant tracks of the British colonial rule, and is at present serving as the contested capital for the state of Israel; Spatially, it is divided between East (part of the occupied West Bank) and West, and between Palestinian, Jewish-orthodox religious, and secular neighbourhoods; It is a religious city, in which past and future practices and desires are part of quotidian life, and hence also a gendered urban fabric due to the vast power of religious and national narratives; It is a Neo-liberal city, in which local and global capital plays a major role in new urban developments. Finally, it is a place of paradoxical encounters and productive frictions defying top-down categorisations. ‍ The program engages in a thorough examination and mapping of the spatial disciplines, practices and projects that have been transforming the city—practices of urban planning and design, preservation and landscape in particular. This examination will be backed by a deep understanding of contemporary urban discourses on conflict zones and on the city’s multiple pasts, presents and futures. Addressing the city as a laboratory to investigate a highly contested built environment, the Learning from Jerusalem / Al-Quds international program offers a platform to explore the intersections of various urban processes in time and space, and through their study, provide students with a sound basis in critical urban theory, geography and urban design strategies and tactics. The summer lab is a module within Bezalel's Masters in Urban Design, headed by prof. Els Verbakel. The program is an intensive 7-week summer term, based on a design lab, a research and writing seminar and several lecture courses.

The program is intended for individuals who have completed an undergraduate program in the fields of architecture, planning, landscape architecture and urban design as well as in the social sciences and urban and political geography, seeking a cutting-edge inter-disciplinary program.

The name of Bezalel is synonymous with more than 100 years of Israeli art, years of innovation and quality. Bezalel, established in 1906 by artist Boris Schatz, as the “Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts,” is currently the “Bezalel academy of arts and design Jerusalem”, Israel’s leading academy of art and design, and one of the most prestigious in the world. Bezalel’s unique strength lies in its ability to respond swiftly to cultural changes, as demonstrated by the numerous artistic breakthroughs it has been responsible for.