About this Event
About
What if a school begins where displacement gathers?
In this seminar, DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Research) founders, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, explore how practices of collective learning become forms of re-existence –pedagogical and political – in the face of genocide and erasure.
Over two decades of work across sites of exile and control, DAAR's long-term projects are shaped by displacement and collective knowledge: the UNRWA Girls' School (Shu'fat) refugee camp in Jerusalem and Campus in Camps (Dheisheh) refugee camp in Bethlehem, which continues to resist disappearance; a travelling Tree School rooted in shared shade; and the Decolonizing Architecture Advanced Studies programme (DAAS) unfolding between Sharjah, Cairo and Stockholm.
Together, they reveal how learning does not emerge despite displacement but through it, carried by those who gather, reflect and act amid uncertainty. Pedagogy and architecture merge as shared acts of grounding, holding and refusing disappearance.
At a time when entire communities are targeted for elimination, learning environments can become places where forms of re-existence are rehearsed and sustained. They become spaces where learning is inseparable from political commitment, where pedagogy becomes a ground for refusing erasure, and where architecture is reclaimed as an ethical and situated practice.
With responses from Lobna Al-Sana and chaired by Mohamad Hafeda.
This event is part of the flagship CRUNCH Series at the Bartlett School of Architecture.
Please note this event has limited capacity and operates on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors close at 18:40.
Speaker biographies
Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti are the founders of DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Research), an artistic research practice situated between architecture, art, pedagogy and politics. Over two decades, they have developed research projects that are theoretically ambitious and practically engaged in the struggle for justice and equality. Their practice has received the Golden Lion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, the Prince Pierre Foundation Prize, the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism at Bard College, the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University and the Prince Claus Prize for Architecture. Sandi Hilal is Visiting Professor at Lund University, and Alessandro Petti is Professor of Architecture and Social Justice at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm.
Lobna Al-Sana is a Bedouin architect and artist from southern Palestine whose practice addresses social questions through architecture, weaving, writing, film and mapping. She holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, where she received the Azrieli Prize in Architecture (2022). She is Co-Founder of Sada, a Jerusalem-based art movement that uses art and architecture to confront the challenges of life under occupation. Al-Sana collaborated on the VR film ‘Remember This Place’, screened at the Venice Film Festival in 2023, and is currently working on ‘The Black Goat’, a documentary reflecting spatial transformations in the Naqab. She currently leads mapping and architectural initiatives at the Regional Council for the Unrecognised Bedouin Villages (RCUV) while developing local building techniques in Palestine.
Mohamad Hafeda is an artist, writer, and academic whose work explores spatial justice through community engagement and participatory art and architecture. His research addresses borders, displacement, refuge, and spatial rights. He is Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and a founding partner of Febrik, a collaborative platform for participatory art and design research working with underrepresented communities in contexts of migration and refuge. Mohamad is author of Negotiating Conflict in Lebanon: Bordering Practices in a Divided Beirut (Bloomsbury, 2019), and co-author of Creative Refuge (2014) and Action of Street / Action of Room: A Directory of Public Actions (2016). He has also co-edited Narrating Beirut from its Borderlines (Heinrich Boll, 2011) and Border Fictions (2025). His films include ‘The Time While Waiting’ (2022) and ‘Sewing Borders’ (2018). His collaborative projects with communities, NGOs, the United Nations, and cultural institutions have been presented at the Serpentine Galleries, South London Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Eye Filmmuseum, and Beirut Art Center. He received the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2021 for his contributions to socially engaged art.
Image: DAAS - Decolonizing Architecture Advanced Studies in Sharjah, 2025
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Christopher Ingold Auditorium (XLG2), 22 Gordon Street, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
