The city should be all yours

Located in the eastern part of Jerusalem, north of the Old City walls, the vicinity of Bab Al-Zahra reflects layers of successive regimes, culminating in Israel’s de facto annexation. This process has been marked by spatial fragmentation, institutionalized governance, and militarized control. Amid this orchestrated order, local residents protagonists of urban resistance engage in everyday practices that expose the tensions between top-down colonial strategies and counter-hegemonic forms of care and resilience. The project responds to the absence of infrastructures for collective care and public life by redesigning the Rockefeller compound, originally a colonial apparatus of archaeological authority. It is deconstructed and reassembled through civic insertions that subvert its institutional logic, reorienting the space toward communal authorship, spatial reappropriation, and the creation of fluid, alternative “third places” for the commons.