On May 23rd, 2023, the Department of Architectural Engineering of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem hosted the final presentation of the results produced by the course “Documentation of Historical Buildings”, developed in partnership with the Marie Curie European project “MOEBHIOS – Multi-attribute values’ OntologiEs to improve Built Heritage InformatiOn assessment in cluStered territories”.
The course, held by Prof. Yara Saifi (Al-Quds University) and Dr. Raffaella De Marco (University of Pavia) for students of the Architectural Engineering degree course at Al-Quds University, focused on teaching methods for the documentation, representation, and descriptive investigation of historic and traditional Palestinian buildings. Digital, photographic and 3D photogrammetric documentation techniques were transferred from the experience gained at DAda-LAB. laboratory of the DICAr Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture at the University of Pavia. These digital strategies were combined with archival research, historical sources and the collection of storytelling and community interviews, through the research conducted by the Department of Architectural Engineering at Al-Quds University, to reconstruct typological architectural features and histories of the transformation of the territory of Palestine through local architecture.
The year’s topic focused on “Architectural Modernity in Palestine: relating historical development and social memories to building typologies”, documenting the architectural heritage from 1948 to the 1960s-70s of major urban arteries in the cities of Jerusalem, Hebron/Al-Khalil, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus and Jericho. The students involved in the course and authors of the elaborates are: Ruba Abu-Gheith, Diala Al-Lahham, Abdallah Al-Shamali, Tasneem Abdelal, Rahaf Ahmad, Moddar Alkhateb, Amera Asad, Sara Barakat, Zainab Jamous, Meron Nasser, Sara Owainah, Alaa Owdetallah, Hamza Owesat, Yumna Shelbaya, Muath Siam, Mariam Sowan, Fatima Ziaghab.
The didactic collaboration represents an important action within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions – Post-doctoral Global Fellowship “MOEBHIOS” project (project number 101064433), awarded to Dr. Raffaella De Marco by a European competitive call and coordinated by the University of Pavia, to finance a path of scientific growth and international mobility in her career as a young researcher.
The project, running from 2022 to 2025, envisages a collaboration between the Universities of Pavia (Italy), Al-Quds University (Palestine) and European University Viadrina (Germany) focusing on the value assessment and development of Information Systems for architectural documentation in clustered territories, with a case study of the territory of Palestine. The universities involved, in the persons of Prof. Francesca Picchio, Prof. Yara Saifi and Prof. Izabella Parowicz, will play a supervisory and mentoring role, supporting an international scientific network of collaboration and joint research between the partners.
Among the impacts of the first year of collaboration, an international Summer School 2023 organised by the 3 project universities is planned, with the expansion of the network to the academic institutions of Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE) – Portugal, Izmir Institute of Technology (IIT) – Turkey and The Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) – United Kingdom.
The Summer School “VERY-M Valuing challEnges on aRchitectural tYpologies – Modernity” will be held in the autumn at the DICAr of the University of Pavia, with the participation of international lecturers and students, thanks to the funding obtained through a competitive call in the International Winter and Summer School UNIPV and Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programmes, co-financed by the Horizon Europe – Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme.
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