History of architecture and urbanism, ordinary landscapes, urban anthropology, and Middle Eastern studies 

I am a sixth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. I had also worked as an architect in New York and Tel Aviv, and took part in a variety of projects ranging from large-scale public buildings in East Europe to housing projects in Jerusalem and small residences in the US. 

My research focuses on the relationship between the design of the built environment and political processes. In my dissertation, Designing West Bank Settlements: Histories of Power Relations and Quests for Redemption, I study the planning and evolution of West Bank settlements from 1967 to the present. Following an interdisciplinary study that combines archival research, spatial analysis, and ethnography, I argue that over a period of five decades the West Bank has functioned as a site of intense experimentation with architecture and urban design. Focusing on the interaction between architects, urban planners, and disparate groups of settlers, I show how, in their search after a new aesthetic language that would speak to the settlers’ sense of belonging to the land, each developed different aesthetic visions. I chart the evolution of these competing models to offer a new look at the internal dynamics and reasoning of settlers, and point to the dispersed and fluctuating nature of agency in settlement design and construction.

“Rabbis, Architects, and the Design of Ultra-Orthodox City-Settlements,” in Social Housing in the Middle East: Architecture, Urban Development and Transnational Modernity, eds. Mohammad Gharipour and Kivinc Kilinc (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2018), in press.

“Hanging Out with Cyclists,” Boom: A Journal of California 6, no. 3 (Fall 2016): 84-88.