Building Crafts in Palestine: From Production to Knowledge Production

Since its establishment in 1991, Riwaq has recognized the challenging complexities of preserving Palestinian collective memory through projects that document and restore architectural heritage sites across the West Bank and Gaza. Riwaq is distinguished by its focus on rural areas in Palestine, where tens of historic buildings were restored as community and cultural centers, mainly for marginalized groups. Because of the huge demand for restoration and the scarcity of human and financial resources, Riwaq has been prioritizing and implementing “The 50-Village Rehabilitation Project” in which rehabilitation and safeguarding of heritage in Palestine function as a tool for socio-economic and political development. Throughout its life span, Riwaq has turned to the field of heritage as a medium of thinking about urgent and emergent social-economic-cultural-political concerns. In this paradigm, heritage is not only a field for knowledge production but also for change.