Tatreez as Archive: Spatializing the Palestinian Diaspora

Abstract

Despite the extensive research produced on the topic of Palestinian homes and mobility within the Occupied Territories, the experiences of Palestinians living in the Diaspora are greatly underrepresented. More specifically, accurate information in the form of published data on Palestinian immigrants in Canada is unavailable due to their stateless status and global dispersion. As a result, research to record diasporic knowledge of home for Palestinians living in exile is crucial to understand how local contexts and practices reflect embedded memories and past experiences.

This thesis will analyze how architecture and design work to enhance and augment existing Palestinian-led efforts in both a social and spatial sense. It explores the theme of collective memory and the spatial-temporal aspects of diasporic living by mapping the emergence of ‘tatreez-making’ spaces (Palestinian embroidery) in the Greater Toronto Area. The design proposal offers a collaborative approach that re-imagines the existing Palestine House in the city of Mississauga which acts as a living archive and an event space that celebrates tatreez and empowers its users.

Tatreez is a visual language that has been linked to the shifting social, economic, and political landscape. Historically, the landscape was a major source of inspiration for Palestinian women in designing the motifs. As such, each village carried its own expressions, patterns, and thread colours. Following the displacement, tatreez evolved from being a symbol of regional pride to a symbol of Palestinian nationalism, especially for the diaspora community.

Through tatreez as a guiding medium, the thesis proposes new ways of seeing, understanding, and constructing our visual and material environment in relation to textiles, design, and architecture. By analyzing existing Palestinian initiatives, my research aims to address the following question: How might re-imagined architecture facilitate the preservation of Palestinian culture, identity, and knowledge while maintaining connections to local contexts? The objective of the thesis is to push architects to consider diasporic populations in design research in order to record historical data on migration and employ diasporic knowledge within architectural discourse.