Unraveling layers of stones - a new reading of the Mamila pool

The collaboration between Noa-Arad-Yairi, an artist and urban activist working in Jerusalem’s urban landscape and architect Sharon Koniak, working in the field of social design and craft based activism, offers versatile and innovative insights on urban mapping, visual & material research and design through place perception.

Sharing our experience and working within the mixed disciplines derived from our mutual worlds of art, form & substance research and architecture, the course aims at forming new site specific narratives that negotiate and interact with its spatial, cultural, social & communal qualities.

Staying at a place, ‘hanging out’ there and lingering within its spatial characteristics for the duration of the course, allows us to connect, observe and weave together layers of knowledge and inspiration, establishing gradual place attachment. This in-depth activity combines student’s varied toolkits from the different departments and our multidisciplinary practices, opens up for innovative methods and techniques promoting new site perception.

During the nine (9) days of the course we will stay at the Mamilla pool, explore the place through different filters and practices, applying spatial activism, material thinking, form making and artistic research. We will peel off hidden layers of different narratives and reassemble them to a personal storytelling, allowing for a myriad of voices to materialize and develop new reading of the site.

We will share the new place-knowledge with site related communities, allowing for an additional layer of dialogue between ground based voices and the personal storytelling to emerge. The final project will be binded as an artist book and presented in ‘Agronsky’ and ‘HaMiffal’ as open source books, allowing for a wider discussion, opening up for ripples of the voices to expand within the wider communal stakeholders.