The Palestinian conservation advocate and writer teaches spatial practitioners to imagine a built world beyond the rubbleIllustration: Yazan Abu Salameh for The Architectural ReviewCredit:Illustration: Yazan Abu Salameh for The Architectural ReviewSuad Amiry is the recipient of the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for Contribution to Architecture 2025, part of the W Awards. Read the full announcementSuad Amiry (1951) is not your typical architect; her legacy cannot be reduced to a single line of work. Rather, her work exemplifies a pattern that can be observed in prominent Palestinian figures: a disposition towards life, a multiplicity, an adaptability that withstands their rapidly splintering world. It is in that honourable, defiant legacy that Amirys work demonstrates how entire worlds can be created out of rubble.Amirys childhood memories from her birthplace of Damascus in Syria gave rise to her first exposure to architecture. Amiry went on to study architecture at the American University of Beirut and the University of Michigan. In 1981, she returned to Palestine via Jordan (where she had been brought up) and, on this first trip to her fathers homeland, visited hundreds of villages to study their traditional architecture and terraced lands. Villages across Palestine were sites of rapid economic and political transformations dating to the Ottoman land reforms of the mid1800s. Palestinian villages changed as they were integrated into larger economic flows dominated by Palestinian merchants, urban elites, Ottoman authorities and European markets, resulting in the erosion of farmers mode of subsistence and lifestyle. Such dynamics were further troubled and accelerated by the beginning of Zionist colonisation on Palestines coast in 1882, the British Mandates rule, and then eclipsed by the 1948 catastrophe, or Nakba, that saw the majority of Palestines population expelled by the Israeli protostate and militias.Suad Amiry was born inDamascus in Syria andgrew up in Jordan. Following her studies inarchitecture in Lebanonand the US, Amiry returned to Palestine, which her fathers family had been forced to leave during theNakba of 1948Credit:Leonardo Cendamo / GettyAgainst the grain of these transformations processes that aimed to erase what was left of Palestine Amiry turned her gaze to the material condition of rural Palestinian architecture. Some of the villages, she observed, included giant stone mansions in sharp contrast to more modest farmers housing. These mansions drew Amiry to the village of Deir Ghassaneh perched atop a hill in the Ramallah Governorate, an exemplary qaryat alkursi, or throne village, which had once been a regional centre of power. Amiry conducted research in Deir Ghassaneh for her PhD dissertation between 1982 and 1986, at which time the villages historic core was more or less intact and its houses were still inhabited. The way these traditional villages merged into the surrounding olive groves was truly enchanting, Amiry explains. That is what I miss the most today after the destruction of the rural landscape. It is not only lives but entire landscapes that have been harmed beyond recognition by the relentless forces of settlercolonialism, a transformation that if left unchallenged will result in the total destruction of Palestine.In her dissertation, Amiry followed in the footsteps of Palestinian physician and ethnographer Tawfiq Canaan. But unlike Canaan, Amiry is less preoccupied with classificatory knowledge. She goes much further, developing a hybrid method of inquiry that extrapolates spatial knowledge from stories, memories, even rumours.Through her conversations with the elders of Deir Ghassaneh, Amiry formulated her argument that both kinship and gender were central factors in the spatial organisation of the village. She explains that their stories, historic, real or fictional, were fundamental to understanding why village architecture and its surrounding landscape looked the way it did. Amirys methods of research are typically found in social and ethnographic studies but applying them to the field of architectural history was a brilliant move and necessary given the context of rural Palestine. Her dissertation was adapted into the book Space, Kinship and Gender: The Social Dimension of Peasant Architecture in Palestine, published in 1987.Upon completing her doctorate, Amiry could have moved on to greener less occupied pastures, but instead chose to dedicate herself to Palestine, the country from which her fathers family was expelled in 1948, and the country with which she wasThe question of conservation is no simple matter in Palestine. Palestinian buildings have become direct targets of settlercolonial destruction, using any and all available tools of destruction: bombs, bulldozers, military and zoning policies and neglect. Israels very founding was built on the destruction of about 530 villages between 1947 and 1949. This was a tactical, methodical process of ethnically cleansing Palestine of its native population. That, Amiry explains, is the reason why Riwaq was founded: to protect what remained of Palestines architecture.Riwaq began with very limited resources and as such opted to document cultural heritage. This became the Registry of Historic Buildings: a 13year project that includes histories, maps and photographs of approximately 420 villages in 16 districts across the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. As restoration work began to take shape at Riwaq, Amiry explains that residents of the villages were initially sceptical of rehabilitating the old structures; over the last few decades the historic centres of Palestinian villages had become symbols of poverty and the majority of their residents were impoverished and elderly. Project by project, Riwaq transformed the public perception of these historic sites, by demonstrating their potential and beauty.For Amiry, Riwaqs work is not simply to care for the building but for the villages communities too. The projects produce jobs, generate income and transform ruins into usable buildings that often become community or cultural centres. Riwaqs vision further expanded from tactical incisions into fullscale historic centre renovations, an effort that was named the 50 Village Rehabilitation Project. One such project was the rehabilitation of AlDhahiriya village in the Hebron Governorate, an incremental effort that began in 2004. The effort led to the rehabilitation of a girls school in the village centre in 2007 and by 2011 to a significant portion of the historic core of the village. Another example is the Birzeit revitalisation project, with the aim of integrating the historic centre of the village with its territorial context through planning, strategic physical interventions and cultural work. This too began as a tactical intervention with the rehabilitation of one building for the Rozana Association in 2003. It then led to a protective plan, infrastructural work and cultural initiatives such as the Birzeit Annual Heritage Week and the Riwaq Biennale.One of Riwaqs most recent efforts includes the restoration of historic village cores in Jerusalems hinterland. These villages historically connected to Jerusalem and reliant on the city economically, politically and culturally were severed from Jerusalem, and from each other, when Israel built the annexation wall in the early 2000s. Riwaq dubbed this initiative the Life Jacket Project; one of its most successful manifestations was the restoration of the historic centre of the village Kafr Aqab. The project includes buildings for various local services, arts organisations and storytelling initiatives that transform the historic core into an experiment in social resilience.Through Riwaq, Amiry envisioned an architectural practice that worked with Palestinian adaptability and multiplicity from the bottom up. It was an enactment of sumud, the Palestinian tradition of steadfast perseverance, through architecture. In many ways, this building practice was a natural continuation of Amirys academic work which, in its attention to neglected buildings and their historic intertwining with dynamics of kinship and gender, provided a roadmap for a new type of architectural practice in Palestine one that engages with its challenges and changing context, that cares for details and memory, that integrates liberatory and restitutive purposes into its programme, and that constructs the possibility of Palestinian return to land. Amiry demonstrated this via her own return, and then through her stubborn dedication to seeing potential, and beauty, where no one else dared to intervene.One of the most striking aspects of Amirys legacy is that it is full of unexpected twists and turns. In 2002, under thenPrime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel reoccupied the parts of the West Bank that had been given a short gasp for air following the Oslo Accords in 1993. This included Ramallah, where Amiry resides with her husband, the Palestinian sociologist Salim Tamari (they had met in 1991 just as Amiry had relocated to Palestine). The arbitrary and collective curfews imposed by the Israeli occupation meant that Amiry was forced to bring her 91yearold motherinlaw to live with her. Amirys fate was to continue spending time with her elders, except now she would tell the stories. She explains that the external occupation of Sharons army compounded by the occupation of my house led her to write her first autobiographical book Sharon and My MotherinLaw. The book was a tour de force: translated into 20 languages, it exposed the Israeli occupations cruelty and the absurdity of life in Ramallah at the time for the entire world to witness. Amiry continues to write, and is one of contemporary Palestines most globally recognised authors.Amirys legacy continues to lead the way for countless young practitioners who refuse to accept that certain worlds are destined for the bulldozer. In the summer of 2007, I was back in Palestine to volunteer with Riwaq on the restoration of an old stone farmhouse in the village of Taybeh. It was in Riwaqs office building in the heart of El Bireh that I first met Amiry. She taught us to approach architecture with curiosity and with an open heart, no matter in what state it presents itself. Every stone deserves to be cared for and every young Palestinian deserves the experience of building something, in Palestine, using our local materials and traditions. During that summer in Taybeh, I learnt to clean limestone and apply mortar to a stone facade, an experience that kickstarted my own scholarship in architecture and urbanism.Amirys ability to recognise potential in the destroyed architectures of occupied Palestine, and to find humour in moments of brutal violence, testifies to the ways in which, for her, architecture and storytelling are parallel conduits for the building of future worlds, namely a liberated Palestine. Amiry teaches young architects and urbanists, especially ones from destroyed worlds, to continue to envision the world they want to see, not the world in which they are forced to live.2025-03-05Reuben J Brown Share AR March 2025W AwardsBuy Now