Prof. Arch. Els Verbakel, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem 

Prof. Arch. Mike Turner, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem 

Mr. Netanel Mazeh, Ministry Of Jerusalem And Heritage

Arch. Eran Mordohovich, ICOMOS Israel

Chair: Dr. Noah Hysler Rubin, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

2.1.2022 - 17:00

Carleton University, Canada; Secretary-General, ICOMOS

Digital technologies in service of Historic Urban Landscapes Protection, Management and Presentation

Chair: Prof. Arch. Mike Turner, UNESCO Chair in Urban Design and Conservation Studies, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

2.1.2022 - 18:00

Mr. Yoel Even, City Engineer, Jerusalem Municipality

Ms. Efrat Even-Or, Jerusalem Development Authority

3.1.2022 - 8:45

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Unmarked Footsteps: Practicing Unarchived Practices

Chair: Arch. Ahmed Kharouf, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

3.1.2022 - 9:00

Dani Schrire is a lecturer at the Hebrew University with a joint appointment in the Program for Folklore and Folk-Culture Studies and the Program in Cultural Studies. He is currently the chair of the Folklore Program and the Director of the Folklore Research Center. His research addresses folkloristic theory, history and practice, namely the work of collecting and archiving, everyday life, critical heritage studies, walking as cultural practice and postcards and postcarding - the latter is carried out in relation to the David Pearlman Holy Land Postcard Collection which was recently donated to the Folklore Research Center. 

Dr. Gili Merin, Royal College of Arts, London

Dr. Yair Wallach, SOAS, University of London

Dr. Abigail Jacobson, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Dr. Moshe Naor, Haifa University

Prof. Oren Barak, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Chair: Prof. Menachem Klein, Bar Ilan University

3.1.2022 - 9:45

Dr. Gili Merin: A Travelogue of Travelogues: How 19th Century Travelers Shaped Jerusalem

This paper focuses on the century that began with the Tanzimat reform of the Ottoman Empire in 1839, a time when pilgrimage was instrumentalized by institutions of power to appropriate the city according to their vision. It was a time when a constellation of reforms, agreements and events resulted in the exponential growth of pilgrim-tourists to Jerusalem, who were now able to buy property, survey the terrain, dig the ground for tangible proof of their own history, and enjoy the comfort of developed infrastructure that proliferated in and around the city. However enthusiastic these visitors were, they were often met with the disappointing reality of Jerusalem: a modernising peripheral town in Turkish Palestine, a far cry from the Western-European imagination of the Holy Land.They wrote-out their disappointment in a plethora of travelogues, which were circulated to further enhance this colonialist and orientalist sentiment towards Ottoman Jerusalem.This condition was finally rectified when the British Empire conquered Jerusalem in 1917 and immediately began planning the space of the city with a sense of patrimonial urgency. Using the rhetorics of preservation, improvement and restoration, the Mandate’s urban plans saw the design of Jerusalem as a revival of a city of their mind that existed only in Western collective memory. This included an active removal of every feature that made the biblical city illegible to the Western gaze; that is, buildings, materials, and landscapes that did not fit within the picturesque image of the ancient, the holy, and the beautiful. It was a scenographic project where the primacy of the visual triumphed the needs of the city’s varied inhabitants, a project aimed at constructing a familiar view for the pilgrim-tourist, saturated with Western imagery that spanned renaissance to romanticism. Ultimately, it is this transformation that fostered the valorisation of the urban realm —what Francoise Choay defines as enhancement and Karl Marx as the production of surplus value — a mechanism that transforms the city’s monuments into consumable products, thus subjecting the city’s space not only to political forces, but also to economical exploitation.

Dr. Yair Wallach: The street as archive - and archiving the street

This talk will address the textual artefacts in the streets of Jerusalem - and their role as an "archive" of sort of Jerusalem's history. Old signs of sites, institutions, shops, streets; Islamic inscriptions; Jewish dedication texts; text on old Post boxes or on sewage covers - these are important layers in the historical landscape of Jerusalem. Some of these texts have received careful attention, and were preserved and restored, others have been neglected, ignored, and sometimes erased and destroyed. In my talk I will think through the attempts to capture, catalogue and publish some forms of these texts. Such attempts of archiving and publication included: the survey of street names in Jerusalem in 1860s - documented on Wilson's map of Jerusalem, later reproduced in other maps; The American Colony photo studio, whose photographs (late 19th century - early twentieth century) captured street scenes and often also signs or placards - sometimes deliberately so, sometimes by accident; Max van Berchem's survey of Islamic inscriptions (early 1900s); Pinchas Grajevsky's survey of Jewish inscriptions after 1927 (Avney Zikaron); Binjamin Kluger's collection of Pashkevilim (Min Hamakor, published 1970s onwards). These were very different projects, which served very different visions of Jerusalem. I will consider the politics behind such archiving; its measure of success and failure; and what this entails for contemporary dynamics and dilemmas around archiving Jerusalem.

Dr. Abigail Jacobson, Dr. Moshe Naor: Musrara Neighborhood

The paper focuses on the Jerusalemite neighborhood Musrara between the years 1948-1967. We examine it as a neighborhood trapped between two borders of very different kinds. On its eastern side stood the physical border, consisting of a barbed wire, that divided the city of Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967 between the Israeli and Jordanian forces. Musrara’s western border was the one separating the neighborhood from west Jerusalem, enhancing the division between Musrara’s residents of new immigrants of Middle Eastern descent and the mainly Ashkenazi, wealthier population of the western part of Jerusalem. The eastern border is symbolized by the Mandelbaum Gate, also called “the circle of tears”, the checkpoint that served as the only point of transition between the Israeli and Jordanian parts of the city. The western border, which we call in the paper “the border of despair,” is the one marking the internal rifts and tensions within the Jewish population of the city. The analysis of the neighborhood, between the years 1949-1967, focuses on this position of a trapped neighborhood, located on the margins of Jewish and Arab existence in post-1948 Jerusalem, and on the meaning of the border and the acts of border-crossing. In Israeli memory and historiography, Musrara is mainly remembered as a symbol for the Mizrahi struggle and as a place which formed the political and social agenda of the Black Panthers movement (Hapanterim Hashḥorim). In our paper, we focus on the perspective of the immigrants and refugees who resided on the double border. The border discussed is physical and national, as it separates between Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinian refugees, living on the eastern side of the city. But it also carries a more elusive nature, that of a border within Jewish Jerusalem, between the new immigrants, living on the margins of the city, near the “no man’s land”, and those living in “new Jerusalem'', in the western part of the city. 

Abigail Jacobson is a senior lecturer at the Dep. of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. Her main research interests are urban and social history of late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine/Eretz Israel. Her first book is "From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem between Ottoman and British Rule" (2011), and her second, with Moshe Naor, "Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine" (2016). The latter was recently published in Hebrew by Magness Press (2021).

Prof. Oren Barak: Shaping the Symbolic Landscape in Jerusalem: Formal and Informal Attempts to "Normalize" Gaza Road/Street

This paper will discuss formal and informal efforts to shape the symbolic landscape in the city of Jerusalem by focusing on the attempts to "normalize" "Gaza Road/Street" [רחוב/דרך עזה] in recent years. "Gaza Road/Street" is one of the oldest and most well-known streets in Jerusalem, dating back to the period of the British Mandate. To make navigating the city easier for locals and foreigners, a number of central streets in Jerusalem were named after the towns and cities to which those streets led, including "Jaffa Road", "Hebron Road", "Bethlehem Road", and "Gaza Road". After Israel's independence, these street names remained more or less unchanged. However, in the last decade or so, and after Israel's relations with Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip became increasingly strained, Jerusalem residents and members of the City Council began to call upon the Jerusalem Municipality to rename "Gaza Road/Street". However, despite numerous proposals to rename it, "Gaza Road/Street" still appears on Jerusalem's maps and street signs. At the same time, recent years have seen formal and informal attempts to "normalize" "Gaza Road/Street" by making it less threatening and more welcoming to Israelis. These include holding public events in the street, such as "Gaza is Moving" [עזה זזה] and "Einstein in Gaza" [איינשטיין בעזה]; posting colorful posters [שפת רחוב] in various parts of it; and mounting new street signs in several venues which translate the street's name not as "Gaza" (in English) or غزة (in Arabic), which are the names of the city of Gaza, but, rather, as "Azza" (in English) and عزه or عزّا (in Arabic), thus "distancing" the street from its hostile referent object. The paper will discuss these various formal and informal efforts to shape the city's symbolic landscape and how they can be documented and analyzed.

Professor Oren Barak teaches political science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he is the Maurice B. Hexter Chair in International Relations – Middle East Studies. His research deals with the relationship between state, society and security and he has published books and numerous articles on these topics. His current research project, funded by the Israel Science Foundation, deals with "Shaping the Symbolic Landscape in Divided Cities".

Prof. Kobi Cohen-Hattab, Bar Ilan University

Arch. Ruti Liberti Shalev, The Technion Institute of Technology

Arch. Shmuel Groag, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

Ms. Sigal Barnir, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

Dr. Arch. Liat Savin Ben Shoshan, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

Dr. Arch. Oryan Shachar, The Technion Institute of Technology

Dr. Arch. Irit Carmon Popper, The Technion Institute of Technology

Chair: Dr. Abigail Jacobson, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

3.1.2022 - 11:45

Prof. Kobi Cohen-Hattab: Another look at the transition from the Zionist Community (Yishuv) to a State: Establishing the Israel State Archives, 1948-1950

The aim of this paper is to answer the question of why the Central Zionist Archives (hereafter CZA), the institutional archive that served the two main pre-State infrastructures, the Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, was not transformed into a State Archive in 1948. We answer the question, first by analyze historical-theoretical meanings and aspects of Archives in general and particularly National and States Archives in 19th-and early 20th Europe. By using examples from National Archives in Central Europe, we will then continue to analyze the discourse regarding the position of the Central Zionist Archives in 1948 and the establishment of the Israeli State Archives in 1949. In our third chapter the paper will discuss the resolution in 1949 to establish the State Archives and to ignore the centrality and importance of the Central Zionist Archives. In our fourth chapter, we will try to answer the above central question by locating the marginalization of the Central Zionist Archives, and the founding of the Israel State Archives as a bureaucratic governmental Archives by using the concept Mamlachtiuyt ("Statism"), as a unique Ben-Gurion concept of ruling and governing Young Israel in the 1950s

Prof. Kobi Cohen-Hattab is an Associate Professor at the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar Ilan University, Israel. His main research interests are historical-geography of tourism in modern time, the development of Holy Sites, History of the archives in Israel and the relationships between Zionism and the Sea. His books include: Tour the Land - Tourism in Palestine during the British Mandate Period (1917-1948), Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi: Jerusalem, 2006 (Hebrew); 2. Tourism, Religion and Pilgrimage in Jerusalem, Routledge: U.K, 2014 (coauthor book with Prof. Noam Shoval); The Maritime Revolution: The Yishuv’s Hold on the Sea and Shores of the Land of Israel, (1917-1948), Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi: Jerusalem, 2019 (Hebrew); The Western Wall: The Dispute over Israel's Holiest Jewish Site, 1967–2000,  Brill: Leiden, 2020 (coauthor book with Prof. Doron Bar). 

Arch. Ruti Liberti Shalev: Towards an Arab Architecture Archive

Arch. Shmuel Groag: Critical Heritage and alternative archive: The Jaffa case 

Ms. Sigal Barnir, Dr. Arch. Liat Savin Ben Shoshan: Alternative and Creative Archives: Lifta and Dir-Yassin

In recent years we have gathered various materials that deal with the silent spatial conflict that is spread on the two sides of the Western entrance road to Jerusalem, where the Palestinian villages of Lifta and Deir Yassin used to exist – artistic and architectural researches created by artists, filmmakers, scholars and students. The remains of Lifta are 45 houses which roofs have been bombed to prevent the return of their original inhabitants, and at the moment, the question of their conservation is discussed in planning committees; the houses of Deir Yassin, confined behind a fence and a gate were preserved, and turned into homes for hospitalized mentally ill. Throughout the lecture we will present acts of collection of testimony, artistic acts of representation, an artistic archive that argues for the inability to represent, projects of Palestinian, Israeli, and other architects and students of architecture who try to construct an imagined future for the space, a work of a Palestinian architect from Lifta who revives the village through a 3D model built using archive photographs, a media lab that reconstructs the village through immersive augmented reality, works that imagine return or argue for the possibility of forgiveness. In the lecture we would like to examine the significance of the alternative archive created from this collection of works, we will ask of its possibility to influence reality, and discuss the ethics embedded in its aesthetics.

Sigal Bar Nir is an Independent curator, researcher of architectural landscape and culture. Received her MA with honors from the Metropolis: City Culture and Architecture Program at UPC, Barcelona. Teaches at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design Jerusalem in the Department of Material and Visual Culture, at the Department of Interior, Building and Environment Design in Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Ramat Gan, and at the Integrated Design Master Program of the Holon Institute of Technology. Barnir has curated numerous exhibitions dealing with the spatial relations of culture and design, shown in museums and galleries in Israel and abroad. She curated international events such as the Israeli exhibitions at the Biennales of Architecture in Venice and Rotterdam and was the curator and cofounder of the Landscape Urbanism Biennale in Bat Yam, Israel.

Liat Savin Ben Shoshan, is an architect, a writer and a lecturer. She was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion Institute of Technology. She teaches at the department of visual and material culture in Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem, and at the Faculty of cinema and communication at Hakkibutzim College. She studies questions of the contemporary urban experience, of social and political agency in architecture, and on the parallels and intersections of architecture and [moving] images. She publishes in peer reviewed journals and lectures in a variety of international conferences.

Dr. Arch. Oryan Shachar, Dr. Arch. Irit Carmon Popper: Archive and the City

On the 5th of November 2021, a journalistic article titled “Ivory Tower in the Woods,” was published in Ha’aretz newspaper, depicting the story of the picturesque residential complex of senior researchers from the Technion who settled there in the 1950s.1 The old red tiled roof neighborhood peeks out through the wild vegetation in one of the main parts of the Carmel heights. The journalistic coverage was based on an extensive documentary archive-based work done by a group of students within the framework of an academic course titled "The Site and the Archive,” which we have been teaching for the past few years at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion IIT. The core of the course is aimed at teaching the complex skill of documentation as a professional practice that connects archival research and physical documentation of a specific site, in order to formulate the site’s essential values and meanings, as a basic platform for future architectural intervention. On one hand, we challenge the students to embrace new approaches of narrating and interpreting heritage as the initial part of the documentation process. On the other hand, we suggest developing creative planning ideas as potential solutions for the preservation of the sites. By exposing alternative, intuitive and subversive ways to present heritage in the urban landscape, performed by creative agents outside of the architectural preservation discipline, we seek to expand the professional toolbox and educate to democratize heritage for the sake of environmental wellbeing. This abstract’s aim is to present the case study of one of the historic residential complexes, which exemplifies the importance of archival research as an educational tool for integrating the new historic urban landscape approach. But moreover, by gaining much interest in visual urban storytelling it provides access beyond academia into action on the platform of the public arena. Thus, an opportunity arises to support diverse historical narratives by bringing together researchers and practitioners, for practical involvement in favor of ensuring integrative planning for sustainability, for the sake of its future reservation and prevention of demolishing caused by current development.

Prof. Tovi Fenster, Tel Aviv University

Dr. Noah Hysler Rubin, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

Mr. Benjamin Weil, independent researcher

Mr. Ahmad Mahmoud, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Prof. Liat Kozma, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Chair: Dr. Shira Wilkof, The Technion Institute of Technology

3.1.2022 14:00

Prof. Tovi Fenster: Archives and Absentees’ Politics: The Palestinian – Jewish frictions in Jaffa and Jerusalem, Israel

The focus of the paper is on the archive as constituting a contact zone and a site of the ‘exceptional contra-colonial order of things’. To be more precise, the paper examines how not only does the archive content portray settler-colonial possessions and urban planning policies but also the archive itself constitutes a contact zone and a site of the ‘exceptional contra-colonial order of things’, to paraphrase Stoler’s (2002) perception of the archive as the colonial order of things. The new Archaeology of the Address Methodology (AAM) which focuses on the micro-geography of the specific address in Jaffa and Jerusalem, allows us to bypass the ethical problems of lack of access because of restrictions of confidentiality and to find the ‘crack’ in the hegemonic boundaries.

Tovi Fenster is a professor of geography and human environment at Tel Aviv University. She teaches social and cultural geography, urban planning, gender and geography. She has published articles and book chapters on ethnicity, citizenship and gender in planning and development. She is the founder and head of PECLAB (http://peclab.tau.ac.il/) (2007-today); the former Head of the Institute of Diplomacy and Regional Cooperation(2011-2012). Former NCJW Women and Gender Studies Program Head (2007-2009). Former Chair of IGU Gender and Geography Commission (2004-2008). In 1999, she initiated the establishment and has been the first Chair (2000-2003) of Bimkom-Planners for Planning Rights in Israel (NGO). 

Dr. Noah Hysler Rubin, Mr. Benjamin Weil:The significance of and the threats to the British Planning collection, Jerusalem Municipality Historical Archives

The subject of the paper is the series of files and plans relating to the planning of Jerusalem during the British Mandate period (1922-1948), most of which is deposited in the historical archives of the Jerusalem Municipality. Being the largest collection of British Jerusalem planning material, it holds several series. Perhaps the most significant is a sub-series of 27 of the most important plans of Jerusalem at the time, amongst which may be found: three thematic plans for the City Walls and the planned park around them; the Nature Reserve Area on the slopes of Mount Scopus and Silwan; and the "Eastern Area" (the semi-arid area east of the eastern villages and up to the municipal boundary). Also included are three sections of the Urban Ring Road and the alignment of the new Hebron Road, and 16 district or neighborhood plans that contain most of the built-up area of the city. 

Unfortunately, the files and plans in this series and others are no longer intact, with many files missing or moved to other locations, thus requiring cross-referencing of parallel files between these and other archives and collections. The material that was held at both the municipal archives was preserved in a relatively concentrated form at specific locations, but in primitive conditions, in relation to archival requirements of the day. Recently, due to viewing restrictions at the municipality Archives, and lack of proper cataloging the collection can hardly be reached by researchers, planners, and other practitioners. Considering the latest endeavor of the Municipality to move its collections to the Israel State Archives altogether, we feel an urgent need to expose its contents and its unique merits. 

The paper will expose the importance of this unique collection, touch upon the hardships in reaching the actual material and using it, and finally, raise concern regarding the dangers looming upon it, due to its neglected state and misuse. 

Noah Hysler Rubin is a cultural geographer and a town planner, a graduate of the Hebrew University. Her research deals with spatial aspects of political, social and cultural encounters and the effect of these on the modern discipline of town planning. In her PhD, which was written in Jerusalem and in London, she analyzed the planning theory and practice of Patrick Geddes in comparative context, examining his work in Britain, India and Palestine. Aside from teaching planning history and theory at Bezalel, she also practices planning, mainly on projects of urban conservation and currently runs the Jerusalem Digital Archives project in collaboration with the Jerusalem Development Authority. Dr Hysler Rubin's current interests include the genesis of urban planning in Israel/Palestine, the planning of divided Jerusalem, post-colonial planning critique, and values and criteria for conservation and digital heritage.

Benjamin Weil was born in London, UK. After finishing high school studies, he came to Israel in 1970 for Talmudic studies, followed by academic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, culminating in a Master's degree in Geography and Urban Studies, whilst specializing in the subject of the planning of Jerusalem during the British Mandate period. He worked for several years in the Jerusalem Municipality Town Planning Department and later moved to the Ministry of Housing, where he held senior planning and administrative positions in the Jerusalem District office. Following his retirement in 2018, he now acts as consultant to the 'Jerusalem Archives' project, relating to British Planning archival material in Jerusalem, and also as consultant on public utilities allocations for several Government and private planning projects.

Mr. Ahmad Mahmoud: The history of sanitation infrastructure in Jordanian Jerusalem 1948-1967.

The archive of Jerusalem municipal council offers a unique perspective into the urban development of the city in general and specifically in public health issues in Jerusalem under Jordanian Rule 1948-1967. In Time The access to Historical Municipal council Archive limited, my lecture shed light on files of sanitation issues, which recently found in the Archive of The Harry S. Truman institute for the advancement of Peace. The files of sanitation supply a Picture of daily life old city of Jerusalem mainly, in aspects of cleaning the city, infrastructure maintenance, and labor issues. Above mentioned files could serve both of social history and urban studies scholars, in order to study the Jordanian rule, as a period absent from field of social and infrastructure history studies. 

Ahmad Mahmoud is a Doctoral student in Islamic and middle eastern studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My doctoral thesis titled:  Between Ottoman Rule and British colonial Rule: Public Health in Haifa, Tiberias, and Nablus in 1902-1934. Supervisors: Prof. Liat Kozma, Dr. Abigail Jacobson.  In 2019 I submitted my M A thesis for Hebrew University of Jerusalem, that focus on public health and sanitation in Haifa during British mandate 1920-1934. Both of my Master and doctoral projects focus on public health as a lens to shed light on local history of Palestinian community. My research as a part of research group project of regional history of medicine in modern middle east, which funded by ERC. 

Prof. Liat Kozma: On the Downsides of Digitization

In early 2016, the Israel State Archive decided to close down its reading room to the public and embark on a large-scale digitization project. The purpose of this project was and remains the democratization of access to historical source material, that would be available online rather than to a handful of researchers in the archive’s reading room. A coalition of archivists, historians and civil society activist warned of the perils of this measure. The denial of access to original source material, we argued, denies the historian valuable data, which the scanned version does not and cannot include. It also unnecessarily prolongs the research projects and forces the historian to wait for documents to be scanned, for weeks and months, rather than having them readily available on-site. Since the closing of the reading room, more problems became apparent: documents take more than a year to be available on line, and sometimes they never are. On-line availability makes archival documents into “publication”, which requires the eye of a censor before exposing them to the public. Passages are blackened, documents disappear, and documents are not necessarily returned to the file in the order in which they were extracted for scanning purposes – and the physical file in its original form is thus lost forever. The lecture will address the accumulated damage to the writing of history in Israel in the last years, and will question whether and how it could be rectified.

Liat Kozma is an associate professor at the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and serves as the Harry Friedenwald Chair in History of Medicine. She was the co-founder and one of the first editors of the Social History Workshop blog in Haaretz website.

Mr. Yoav Ginai, on Behalf of the Guini/Ginai family

Dr. Landscape Arch. Michal Bitton, The Technion Institute of Technology

Mr. Elad Shpindel, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

Ms. Shir Yakov, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

Chair: Mr. Israel Kimhi, Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research

3.1.2022 - 16:15

Dr.  Landscape  Arch. Michal Bitton: Tracing Dr. Matmon on his way to found Ramat Gan

Mr. Elad Shpindel, Ms. Shir Yakov: Ben-Zion Guini's Jerusalem Papers

Mr. Israel Kimhi: Ben-Zion Guini, a personal encounter

Linnaeus University, Sweden

Urban heritage and the needs of future generations

Chair: Arch. Adi Sela Wiener, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

3.1.2022 - 18:00

Kadir Has University, Istanbul

The Making of the Ottoman Jerusalem Collection

Chair: Arch. Alon Sarig, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

3.1.2022 - 18:45

Dr. Tsameret Levy Daphny, The Forum for Regional Thinking. : EXHIBITION TOUR

Dr. Susan Hazan, Europeana Network Association

Dr. Sveta Moskevitch, Israel Antiquities Authority

Ms. Yael Alef, Israel Antiquities Authority

Arch. Ytav Boushira, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

Dr. Hagit Keysar, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

Arch. Komal Potdar, TU Delft, Netherlands and Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

Chair: Dr. Ona Vileikis, International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS).

4.1.2022 - 12:45

Dr. Susan Hazan: The New Europeana Bauhaus

Think of Bauhaus, and you might think of German modern art, design and architecture - a movement to find new solutions for a new era. Now, 100 years on, the European Commission has initiated a New European Bauhaus movement to shape future ways of living that answer the wider challenges we face today. Think green, sustainable and affordable, alongside accessible, inclusive and beautiful and impacting all aspects of how we live. New European Bauhaus calls for new and diverse perspectives to shape the concrete actions that will improve everyday life, and asks for design, art and culture to work alongside modern science and technology.

Dr. Hazan is the CEO, Digital Heritage, Israel, Chair Europeana Network Association, Emeritus, Senior Curator of New Media and Head of the Internet Office at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. She received her  Masters and PhD research at Goldsmiths College, University of London in Media and Communications- focused on electronic architectures in the contemporary museum.

On a personal note… I believe in Transforming Digital Culture, Investigating the digital practices that transform cultural experience while augmenting and disrupting the very ethos of the museum to collect, conserve, stage and interpret unique physical objects.

Dr. Sveta Moskevitch: Reviving the Past through the Digitized Archives of the Israel Antiquities Authority

The Scientific Archive of the Israel Antiquities Authority is a unique collection that documents the intensive archaeological activity in the country since its establishment, and together with the Archive of the Department of Antiquities of the British Mandate in Palestine forms a 100-years sequence of archaeological record of the region. 

Digitization of the archive, planned as a five-year project, started in January 2020. The size of the collection (ca. 13,000 excavation files and 11,000 field plans), combined with the diversity of archaeological data present a challenge, which we considered at the planning stage of the project. However, we did not foresee how the archival material changes during fifty years and how much it will affect our work. The guidelines of the project, like scanning and cataloging instructions, the workflow, cataloging templates, and metadata standards were set from the very beginning. Yet, we learn the archive and its dynamics as we proceed with the work, meet new challenges, and adapt our workflow to the material.

The goal of the project is the creation of a sustainable digital collection that follows the FAIR principles. Digitization of the archive and making it accessible online will open new opportunities in exploring the data, its integration in the ongoing and future cultural heritage projects, teaching, and engaging the community. 

Sveta Matskevich is a Digital Archivist at the Israel Antiquities Authority and a lecturer at the Digital Humanities Program at the University of Haifa. Trained as a field archaeologist, she participated in excavation projects in Israel, Greece, and Turkey, mainly as a surveyor, draughtsperson, and DBMS architect and administrator. Her research interests include archaeological data management, field methods, and history of archaeology. 

Ms. Yael Alef: Information Needs for Cultural Heritage Management in the Digital Age

Israel's archaeological heritage treasures the long-age history of the country. It shaped the landscapes with layers of remains from ancient cultures and created its unique identity. The synagogues from late antiquity have been studied for over a hundred years and are a highlight of Israeli archaeology. However, a conservation survey of ancient synagogues in the Galilee conducted in 2013 and updated in 2018 found that while some sites were developed for tourism with considerable investment, many other sites remained neglected despite their significance. The conservation survey was conducted as part of the Synagogue Conservation Project, and for this project, an inventory system for archaeological heritage was built from scratch for the first time in Israel. The survey data collected in this system enabled informed decisions about the conservation of the sites. Already at this stage, it became clear that the data in the Israel Antiquities Authority information systems does not fit the needs of Cultural Heritage Management (CHM) in the 21st century.

Yael Alef is an architectural conservator with over 25 years of specialized experience in surveys, documentation, and planning historic buildings, towns, and archeological sites. She works in the Conservation Department of the Israel Antiquities Authority and, in recent years, has been coordinating the National Cultural Heritage Inventory Project. In addition, she lectured at the Bar Ilan University, where she has conducted her Ph.D. research on Information needs of Archaeological Sites Evaluation for Cultural Heritage Management Inventory.

Arch. Ytav Boushira, Dr. Hagit Keysar: Whose archives? Toward Civic Data Infrastructures

Architecture can be understood as a double archiving process: first through the various data it processes (programs, standards, materials, labor, manufacturing), and second though the data it produces, embeds and preserves in its material structures (symbols, forms and styles, as well as cultural heritage or suppression) inscribing and reifying them as the metadata for categorizing and making sense of space. Against this backdrop, a “Civic” Architecture turns these underlying archiving processes into the subjects and tools of critical architectural inquiry. It seeks to historicize and politicize the built environment through data and as data. The premise for this talk is an argument well-developed in critical science and technology studies of the past two decades – that digitization, and hence the database, is performative. It is not merely representational but a creative world-making practice. The promissory project of digitizing urban archives, in that regard, begs the question, how will it remake the city? Whose knowledge, whose heritage is being digitized and accessed? By whom? Who benefits? Who’s left behind? The mass digitization of archives, urban or other, is often complicit with dominant discourses of “big data”, claiming that open access to information democratizes knowledge and creates new ways of knowing. As the efficacy of this claim has been extensively challenged, in regard to digitizing Jerusalem’s archives our aim is to acknowledge and think through the performativity of the database. To begin with, we ask, what is “cultural heritage” in context of a ruptured city that is shaped by protracted histories of conflict and colonization? What role Civic Architecture might play in the development of standards, categories, workflows, materials and forums that make up the database and its underlying infrastructure? What is the role of publics in the digitization processes and are these publics preexisting or emergent? In the proposed paper we wish to discuss these questions, drawing on case studies from the work of the Civic Architecture Research Studio in Bezalel in recent years.

Arch. Komal Potdar: Datascaping: An empirical review of an operative tool for sustainable planning and assessments for historic urban environments

As highlighted by the New Urban Agenda (2017), contemporary designs and processes have a potential to leverage socio-economic and socio- cultural developments. However, these practices are often characterized by phenomenon of modernization bringing about drastic transformations in the historic urban cities. Such contemporary developments and infrastructures pose a challenge for the continuity of historic identities along with the creation of divergent urban futures. These design interventions of alterations, adaptive reuses, and redevelopment may lead to a deviation of the city’s historic landscape characteristics and its spatial order, which have sustained over time due to the culture-nature linkages. The identification of physical and metaphysical attributes of memory and identity, and continuity of historic landscapes, its characteristics encompassing social-spatial dynamics plays a crucial role for preservation beyond the protected or designed historic districts. The absence of an inter-disciplinary and inclusive framework and tool for planning and decision making to address the contemporary issues in historic cities and spatial configurations, threatens to lead increased socio- spatial heterogeneity and fragmentation, weakening the continuity of collective identity of the historic fabric. Hence, it becomes essential to acknowledge the spatial resource of heritage, identity and continuity in the context of contemporary design practices. Such spaces are diachronic and the discourse of evolving territories is contingent on the understanding of the urban landscape as a cultural construct, informed by a history of change. Cognizance of the historic spatial configurations and its diachronicity and attributes of value are often under-represented planning and design of urban environments. The research aims to explore and map a comprehensive list of attributes derived from the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape recommendation by study of archival maps and images and explore layered datascapes as an operative tool for planning, assessment and decision making. This research explores the case study of a multicultural historic port town Jaffa, a neighborhood on the fringes of World Heritage ‘White City of Tel-Aviv- the Modern Movement’, Israel to highlight the contrast and the spatial heterogeneity due to contemporary designs and socio- economic processes. The resultant irreversible changes to the historic landscape characteristics may render the attributes and spatial configurations as desolate if not included in planning frameworks. Through an empirical review, the article will aim to establish how contemporary design methods in this historic town result in irreversible changes in the historic landscape and have the potential to render cultural identities as desolate if not included in planning frameworks. The exploration of datascaping for visual representations of all quantifiable forces will be illustrated and reviewed as a potential tool to inform planning and design methodologies for discerning its characteristics and indicators for inclusive urban heritage planning.

Prof. Arch. Edward Denison, University College, London

Dr. Sarah Dowding, University College, London

Dr. Shahed Saleem, University of Westminster

Dr. Duncan Hay, University College, London

Dr. Maryvelma Smith O’Neil, MENA Center for Peace and Development

Mr. Michael Joseph Pick, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

Mr. Daniel Mendelbaum, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

Prof. Sorin Hermon, The Cyprus Institute 

Prof. George Artopoulos, The Cyprus Institute

Prof. Nikolas Bakirtzis, The Cyprus Institute

Dr. Ona Vileikis, International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS)

Chair: Prof. Arch. Zvi Efrat, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

4.1.2022 - 15:00

Prof. Arch. Edward Denison, Dr. Sarah Dowding, Dr. Shahed Saleem, Dr. Duncan Hay: Reflections on ‘Histories of Whitechapel’

This paper will outline key findings from the Survey of London’s ‘Histories of Whitechapel’ project (https://surveyoflondon.org/), a participatory digital archive produced between 2016-2019. It was intended as a project of co-creation, of giving voice to the many not the few, an experiment for the long-running Survey of London as it sought to develop new methodologies for recording the history of London’s streets and buildings. Through the website, we have explored new uses of archival research, oral histories, drawings, workshops, photography, social media, and in doing so the project has captured a snapshot of the present day ‘heritage space’ of Whitechapel, a diverse and changing parish of east London.

Considering the legacy of the ‘Histories of Whitechapel’ project, contributions will be made to the theme of digital methods, with Dr Duncan Hay addressing changes to the form of the website over time and spin-off projects, Shahed Saleem considering the challenges of conducting in-person oral histories and generating meaningful public engagement in the context of a primarily digital project, and Dr Sarah Dowding discussing how participatory digital archives have the potential to productively unsettle default patterns of history writing.

Sarah Ann Dowding is an architectural historian at the Survey of London, where she writes about London buildings of all types and periods. She is also module leader on the MA in Architecture and Historic Urban Environments at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.

Shahed Saleem is a practicing architect, and a design studio leader at the University of Westminster School of Architecture. He was also a Senior Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL working on the Survey of London’s project on the urban history of Whitechapel.

Duncan Hay is an academic, researcher and developer with a background in Digital Humanities and Cultural Studies. He has a PhD in English Literature from the University of Manchester and is a Research Fellow at The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL.

Dr. Maryvelma Smith O’Neil: The Virtual Illés Initiative

Global audiences will soon be able to virtually explore and closely inspect the complex, layered urban topography of late Ottoman Jerusalem as seen in a remarkable relief model of the city completed in 1873 by Stephan Illés. Since 1984 the Illés Relief has been on permanent loan from the Republic and Canton of Geneva to the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem. A 3D replica of the Illés Relief now offers unprecedented global access to an artifact of outstanding universal cultural value for the histories of Jerusalem as well as for heritage preservation.

The Virtual Illés Relief Initiative consists of three phases: the Mughrabi Quarter Digital Archive, a content-dense website which has been completed. The second phase is a WebGL interactive: 3D model browser, low-res 1:1 3D first person reconstruction of the Mughrabi Quarter with text, video and image archives. 

The third phase will be launched by a global interdisciplinary research campaign that will invite scholars and the public to contribute to the urban histories of Jerusalem during the Ottoman era (1517-1917). Multimedia content (maps, photos, audio/video files, graphics, animations) will be carefully vetted, curated, and digitally annotated onto the Virtual Illés Relief. 

A website will enable users to spatially navigate Jerusalem according to both place and time, excavating layers of geo-referenced data in the built topography and exploring its transformation over four centuries. We will map the dense networks of social interaction and spatial experience that still preserve the personal and communal memories of Jerusalemites within the built cultural heritage.  

Mr. Michael Joseph Pick, Mr. Daniel Mendelbaum: The City as Archive - The use of photogrammetry and game engines in creating interactive archives of urban environments.

Photogrammetry is the technical ability to digitally reconstruct fragments of our material surroundings - whether they are particular objects or complex urban realities – through multiple photographic registers and the use of mathematics to organize the interlacement of these photographs. The potential of the reproduction achieved by this technique is the ability to represent digitally the most diverse details that compose our environment. The advancement and cheapening of the technologies involved in the process allows the current popularization of this technology, which is not anymore exclusive to government bodies or large corporations, but can be reproduced from the use of digital cameras such as those found on smartphones - and personal computers. The combination of photogrammetry together with the employment of computer game -engines enables us to create maps that are ever more similar to the territory, and that are that are highly detailed and democratized: the photogrammetric scan is in and of itself an act of archiving that excludes the curation of the archivist. The city is captured as a whole – thus exempting us from the differentiating between the noteworthy and mundane. Moreover, by employing game engines we can attempt to put aside the experts' “view from nowhere” in favor of experiencing the space in first person, thereby allowing the researcher to experience the space not only by seeing and hearing, but by a sense of duration, by wondering and choosing his own point of view, liberated from the point of view of his predecessors. Our work seeks to bring the photogrammetric technique to the field of urbanism, digitally reproducing fragments of the urban fabric, to create digital environments that allow a new interaction between citizens and their surroundings. Our interest is to create a digital platform capable of, on the one hand, archiving and organizing the most diverse information and documents - historical, architectural, cultural and more - that form the present reality, and, on the other hand, constitute a tool for future urban architectural interventions at the most diverse scales.

Michael Joseph Pick Graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a bachelor's degree in history and philosophy, currently enrolled at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem in the Department of Architecture. Michael is experienced in photogrammetric imaging of architecture and is interested in the possibilities inherent to new digital tools for expanding the phenomenological possibilities of the future archive.

Daniel Mandelbaum is a student at the Department of Architecture at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalemand at the Phlosophy, Political Science & Economics program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From my education in social sciences, I appreciate the understanding of architecture as the ultimate manifestation of the social forces and. My recent experience with photogrammetry makes provoke me to question the new opportunities that this tool has to offer in the field of cataloging and archiving the documents responsible for the planning and developing of the urban fabric.

Prof. Sorin Hermon, Prof. George Artopoulos, Prof. Nikolas Bakirtzis: Digital twins of urban heritage - conceptual aspects and implementation challenges: The Pafos gate, Nicosia, Cyprus as an example 

A working definition of a digital twin is “a virtual representation that serves as the real-time digital counterpart of a physical object”. It has to represent a unique asset in the physical world, in a specific instance of the asset, with a digital model, it simulates the physical state and behaviour of the asset, it updates continuously changes in the state, conditions of contexts of the asset, in order to assure the model mirrors reality and embodies a relational interaction data model. Moreover, it provides values through visualisation, analysis, prediction and modelling. Therefore, digitizing built Cultural Heritage poses several challenges that require a careful planning, considering both material and immaterial aspects of the asset, in its present and past manifestations. The 4CH EU funded project aims at establishing a European competence center for the conservation, preservation and valorization of Cultural Heritage, with a specific mandate to advise, support and provide services to CH stakeholders from the public and private sector on matters related to Digital Cultural Heritage. As its foundation, a Knowledge Base will be developed, with Digital Twins of monuments and sites. The presentation will focus on how to define such a digital twin for built urban heritage, considering its material and immaterial aspects, current state of preservation, conservation aspects and socio-cultural contexts it embeds. The case-study selected for discussion is the Pafos Gate, one of the three access points to the surrounded by walls part of Nicosia, the last divided capital of Europe. Recent archaeological excavations in its surrounding were included as well in a larger municipal project for the valorisation of the gate, which is part of the fortifications built by the Venetians more than half a millennium ago. 

Sorin Hermon is associate professor (tenured) at the Cyprus Institute. His research focuses on 3D scientific visualization and large-scale data infrastructures in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage and the integration of Heritage Science tools and methods with Digital Heritage. He leads the DIGILAB working group in E-RIHS, the European Infrastructure on Heritage Science. Major recent EU funded initiatives include 4CH, where he leads the effort on defining risks affecting CH assets by their types and implementation of 3D-based solutions for their mitigation, IPERION-HS, conducting research on defining data models for archaeological sciences, and ARIDANE Plus, the European archaeological data infrastructure, where Sorin helps developing the infrastructure’s 3D capacity. Sorin is also co-Principal Investigator on Paleo-Diet, a bi-lateral cooperation research project with the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation on investigating the earliest evidences for plant processing for food consumption. 

Sorin is coordinating a newly established Master of Science on Digital Cultural Heritage program and CyI and regularly teaches courses on the institute’s PhD program on Science and Technology in Cultural Heritage. He currently supervises five PhD students and four MSc students. 

Dr. Ona Vileikeis: A shared Heritage: Mapping the Traditional Bukharian Jewish Mahallas in Uzbekistan.

Prof. Gideo Avni, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Israel Antiquities Authority

Ms. Tal Ulus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Dr. Zafra Siew, The National Library, Israel

Ms. Liat Weinblum, Israel Antiquities Authority

Dr. Vincent Lemire, Centre de Recherche Français à Jérusalem

Dr. Maria Chiara Rioli, Universities of Ca' Foscari. Venice

Beatrice Vaienti, Institute for Area and Global Studies, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Rémi Petitpierre, Digital Humanities Laboratory, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Prof. Frédéric Kaplan, Institute for Area and Global Studies, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Isabella di Lenardo, Digital Humanities Laboratory, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Dr. Noah Hysler Rubin, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem

Chair: Prof. Benny Kedar, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel 

4.1.2022 - 17:15

Prof. Gideon Avni, Ms. Tal Ulus, Dr. Zafra Siew, Ms. Liat Weinblum: The Ronnie Ellenblum Jerusalem History Knowledge Center – the concept and its implementation

The creation of the Jerusalem History Knowledge Center was initiated three years ago by our dear colleague and mentor, Prof. Ronnie Ellenblum, who passed away unexpectedly in the course of its implementation. It was established as a partnership between the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the National Library of Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Tower of David – Museum of the History of Jerusalem. These institutions, all located in Jerusalem, provide a wide spectrum of various data sources. They have dealt with the methodical collection of the archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, historical documentation, pilgrims and travelers’ itineraries, written and photographic archives, as well as films and musical knowledge of the city and its environs. The first stage of this ambitious initiative was supported by a generous grant from the Israel Ministry of Science.

The center’s vision is to unify the databases of all institutional partners, create a search environment that will enable users to find precise information, dependent on time and space, at a level unavailable elsewhere around the globe. The center’s products will eventually be available at two different levels: at the research level—the possibility of accessing different kinds of knowledge from multiple sources under one roof and in many cross-sections that answer specific research questions in the fields of history, archaeology, art, geography, social sciences, etc.—and at the popular level of the interested public: background material for educational activities, walking tours, 3D representations, etc.

The basic concept under which the center was created is the acknowledgement that no existing city has undergone so many cycles of conquest, exile, destruction and rebuilding as Jerusalem. Over time, these cycles became foundational symbols and the base for the collective identities of all the civilizations active here. Jerusalem has been immortalized in every form of human creation; numberless pilgrims and dreamers, artists and authors, musicians, film makers and intellectuals described it in their works. Many who never visited Jerusalem also described it as they imagined it. The Jerusalem History Knowledge Center would make all these accessible to scholars and the wide public alike. 

This presentation will address the concept of the Jerusalem Knowledge Center and will describe its process of implementation in the past three years.

Gideon Avni is the Chief Archaeologist for the Israel Antiquities Authority and Professor of Archaeology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. For the past four decades he has conducted archaeological researches in Jerusalem and its environs. His Recent books are The Byzantine – Islamic Transition in Palestine, an Archaeological Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2014), and A New Old City – Jerusalem in the Late Roman Period. Rhode Island: Journal of Roman Archaeology supplement (2017).

Tal Ulus is a doctoral student in the Geography Department at the Hebrew University. Her dissertation examines climate anomalies and their impact on mass movement of people from Africa in the last two decades. In the past eight years, Tal has taught and developed the course “Historical Geography of Jerusalem" at the Hebrew University under Ronnie Ellenblum's guidance and has been the coordinator of the Knowledge Center since the center's inception.

Tsafra Siew manages research-oriented projects in the National Library of Israel. Among them is Ktiv: The International Collection of Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts, which makes almost all Hebrew manuscripts worldwide freely accessible online. Tsafra earned a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the field of architectural translations of Jerusalem in Europe, a M.A. in Religious Sciences at Tel Aviv University, a BSc in Computer Sciences and Art History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Liat Weinblum (M.A. Computer Science, Bar Ilan University) is an IT Project Manager at the Archaeological Division of the Israel Antiquities Authority. She specializes in Cultural Heritage related projects among which are the websites of the National Treasures (www.antiquities.org.il/t/), the Survey of Israel (survey.antiquities.org.il) and the online-journals Hadashot-Arkheologiyot (www.hadashot-esi.org.il) and ‘Atiqot (www.atiqot.org.il). Liat is the project manager of DANA (Digital Archaeology and National Archives) – the archaeological documentation system developed at the IAA.

Dr. Vincent Lemire, Dr. Maria Chiara Rioli: Archival Histories and Digital Strolls Inside and Outside Jerusalem: The Open Jerusalem and the Archival City Projects

Jerusalem’s archives are everywhere: the city’s archives – produced, accumulated or arranged by institutions, social groups, religious communities, citizens and travellers – are dispersed across the city but also – extra muros – all around the world: from Istanbul to Moscow, from Rome to Erevan, from Nantes to London, from Athens to Addis Ababa, from Amman to Washington.

Despite this richness, Jerusalem’s archives are sometimes unknown and untapped. Rarely have historians have encountered records produced by different actors, thus ending up with a historiography too often reduced to single voices and communities. 

Indeed, a large part of archives preserved in Jerusalem are only partially or poorly catalogued. For reasons related to limited funding and to the current geopolitical climate, the descriptions of most of Jerusalem’s archival holdings are cursory at best. When they do exist, these catalogs are generally incomplete and written in the dominant language of the collection, which makes them de facto inaccessible to the majority of researchers. 

If a true historiographical renewal is to be achieved, a process of qualitative description must be undertaken by developing solid and coherent inventories that rely on the best European standards in the field. The Open Jerusalem and the Archival City projects have already embarked on this unprecedented challenge to create a rigorous and detailed catalog of available archives related to the history of late Ottoman and Mandate Jerusalem. 

During this presentation we intend to introduce the Open Jerusalem and the Archival City project and their goals, methodologies and results to discover new traces of Jerusalem’s past, present and future.

Vincent Lemire is the PI of the Open Jerusalem and the Archival City projects. He is the director of the French Research Centre in Jerusalem. Among his publications, Au pied du Mur. Vie et mort du quartier maghrebin de Jerusalem (1187-1967) (forthcoming January 2022), Ordinary Jerusalem, 1840-1940

Maria Chiara Rioli is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the universities of Ca’ Foscari in Venice and Fordham in New York and she is the project manager of the Open Jerusalem project. Among her publications, A Liminal Church: Refugees, Conversions and the Latin Diocese of Jerusalem, 1946–1956 (2020).

Beatrice Vaienti,  Rémi Petitpierre, Prof. Frédéric Kaplan, Dr. Isabella di Lenardo: Jerusalem 1840-1940: from historical maps to 4D GIS

This contribution aims at presenting the use of a 3D GIS framework for the visualization of 

the maps of Jerusalem created between 1840 and 1940, as a way of enhancing the analysis 

and understanding of the city’s urban evolution. This historical moment represents an age of deep transformations, characterized by a strong demographic growth and urban expansion outside the walls, which makes it a particularly interesting time frame to study and reconstruct the city’s urban development. 

The corpus used for the project consists of the digitized maps of the Holy City from the Eran Laor Cartographic Collection. However, the proposed contribution tries to create an 

extensible framework in order to promote the addition of new maps. The workflow starts 

with the automatic georeferencing of the maps in a 2D GIS environment. This is achieved 

through elastic projection of the historical maps on contemporary geodata. Semantic 

segmentation is used to retrace the geometries and create intelligent vector layers. 

Jerusalem urban structure is deeply interrelated with its topographic features, whose understanding is vital to grasp the city’s evolution. For this reason, the maps are projected as textures on the 3D terrain model of the Jerusalem area, creating a 3D GIS model that will bring enhanced depth into the historical maps. Moreover, using GIS as a database for raster datasets makes it possible to incorporate the related metadata within the collection, thus promoting its scientific reuse and dissemination. In conclusion, the contribution proposes a method for digital mapping Jerusalem’s urban evolution through its representation in maps between 1840 and 1940, trying to identify the most suitable platforms, instruments and workflow for the creation and visualization of a 4D historical GIS embedding space and time.

Dr. Noah Hysler Rubin: Jerusalem Archives Project, Bezalel: Documenting Jerusalem's modern heritage

'Digitizing Jerusalem Archives', a collaboration of Jerusalem Development Authority (HARLI) and Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem, is an extensive project of heritage documentation and digitization which aims to locate, expose, and digitize official and personal documentation pertaining to the city's modern building and planning. The main objective of the project is to provide access to historic collections of Jerusalem planning and architecture for improving sustainable development and conservation practice and for enhancing heritage research and democratization. The exposition of historic archival material and its digitization is one way of contributing directly to the documentation necessary for the application of the historic urban landscape approach, ensuring integrative planning for sustainability, through the interpretation and support of diverse historical narratives. Digitization could further enrich knowledge by connecting to existing library catalogues, collections, and official databases such as the national archaeological data as well as city data to support the integration of cultural heritage in planning processes. However, each of these processes raises questions of values, authenticity, and critical selections. My appointment as PI in this project, three years ago, is the culmination of a long research process in Bezalel. Yet the earliest seeds of my own interest in this venture were planted some twenty years ago, at the Hebrew University, while I was working alongside Ronnie Ellenblum on Jerusalem Virtual Archives, an early attempt of digitizing material pertaining to Jerusalem, where I was exposed for the first time to the overwhelming effects of digitizing maps and plans and the immense potential for research, practice and overall exposition of knowledge of local Jerusalem archives. In my paper, I will describe the present project's aims and targets, both professional and academic, the tools we identified for reaching them, and the collaboration with the Jerusalem Municipality and other institutions, holding and producing relevant data. I will also tend to the technical challenges facing us and the more fundamental issues which we encounter almost on a daily basis, on our path for the exposition of Jerusalem's varied, often contested, cultural heritage.

Noah Hysler Rubin is a cultural geographer and a town planner, a graduate of the Hebrew University. Her research deals with spatial aspects of political, social and cultural encounters and the effect of these on the modern discipline of town planning. In her PhD, which was written in Jerusalem and in London, she analyzed the planning theory and practice of Patrick Geddes in comparative context, examining his work in Britain, India and Palestine. Aside from teaching planning history and theory at Bezalel, she also practices planning, mainly on projects of urban conservation and currently runs the Jerusalem Digital Archives project in collaboration with the Jerusalem Development Authority. Dr Hysler Rubin's current interests include the genesis of urban planning in Israel/Palestine, the planning of divided Jerusalem, post-colonial planning critique, and values and criteria for conservation and digital heritage.  

4.1.2022 - 18:45