Transitioning Arab-Palestinian Dwelling Landscapes: From Pre-Modern Immanent Practices to Self-Sufficient Façades

Abstract

This paper portrays the vernacular ArabPalestinian architectural and landscape configuration as performative utterances of the peasant subject and community that produced them. The study draws on several case study villages and ruins in the Jerusalem hinterland, examining key periods under Ottoman rule, and their developmental trajectory under British colonial rule until the initial decade of the twentieth century. The paper considers how non-philosophy raises important questions not addressed by existing literature. Through a non-philosophical approach, this paper divides ArabPalestinian architectural culture into two phases. The first phase refers to this architecture as an immanent performative form of thought that utilized fractality and non-Euclidean geometry in creative expressions, living through and with nature. This thinking/building of house architecture and cultivated plots intertwined, forming an inseparable agricultural production system. The second phase encapsulates the distinction of the individual house from its surroundings, and the emergence of the façade with well-chiseled stones. This change symbolized the house as a self-affirmation of its owner’s wealth and social status within the village public sphere. This transformation occurred under the influence of modernization and colonization processes. The third period of non-philosophy is used as a framework in this study to differentiate between architecture as an immanent performative form of thought and architecture as self-affirmation, aiming to grasp the unique experimental thinking/building of premodern Arab-Palestinian architecture. The study considers how these modes of thinking/building may contribute both to architectural and landscape architecture knowledge and to a better comprehension of the non-philosophical approach.