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The Façade as Witness, Mask, and Survivor: Reading Heritage on the Surface of the Palestinian Home

  • Meral Nabulsi

In the Palestinian context the building surface has rarely been neutral. Across a century and a half of Ottoman, British Mandate and Israeli rule, the façade has served as an instrument of historical narration, of cultural value, and of its manipulation. The dwelling is read here through its outer surface, tracing a shift from an inward architecture organised around the courtyard towards a street-facing display imposed from outside. The façade is then followed into later lives: as a preserved skin emptied of its interior, as a stone detached and relocated, and, in Gaza and the West Bank today, as the last surviving element of a building that no longer exists. Heritage is present in all of these. The difficulty lies in how it is read.

  • Keywords:
  • Façade,
  • Heritage,
  • Palestine,
  • Conservation,
  • Vernacular architecture,
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Meral Nabulsi

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain - ORCID: 0009-0008-6478-009X

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  2. al-Astal, Ameera. 2025. Fieldwork documentation of survival façades, Gaza City, November 2025. Unpublished.
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  17. The Times of Israel. 2015. “Mamilla, the Jerusalem Border Neighborhood That Rose from the Rubble.”
  18. The Times of Israel. s.d. “Jerusalem’s Waldorf Astoria Sold for $160 Million.”
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  • Anno di pubblicazione: 2026
  • Pagine: 264-281

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  • Anno di pubblicazione: 2026

Informazioni sul capitolo

Titolo del capitolo

The Façade as Witness, Mask, and Survivor: Reading Heritage on the Surface of the Palestinian Home

Autori

Meral Nabulsi

Lingua

Inglese

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-1113-0.15

Opera sottoposta a peer review

Anno di pubblicazione

2026

Copyright

© 2026 Author(s)

Licenza d'uso

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Licenza dei metadati

CC0 1.0

Informazioni bibliografiche

Titolo del libro

ReUso 2026 - New heritage and future strategies. Perspectives on conservation and promotion

Sottotitolo del libro

14th International Congress Barcelona-Girona, 4-7 November

Curatori

Alessandro Scarnato, Marisa García Vergara, Ángeles Layuno Rosas

Opera sottoposta a peer review

Anno di pubblicazione

2026

Copyright

© 2026 Author(s)

Licenza d'uso

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Licenza dei metadati

CC0 1.0

Editore

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-1113-0

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-1113-0

eISBN (xml)

979-12-215-1112-3

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0

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