Decolonizing Architecture

DAAR—Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti—have been awarded the Golden Lion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia last year for their longstanding commitment to deep political engagement with architectural and learning practices of decolonization in Palestine and Europe. Their artistic research practice is situated between architecture, art, pedagogy and politics. Over the last two decades, they have developed a series of research—projects that are both theoretically ambitious and practically engaged in the struggle for justice and equality. In their artistic research practice, art exhibitions are both sites of display and sites of action that spill over into other contexts: built architectural structures, the shaping of critical learning environments, interventions that challenge dominant collective narratives, the production of new political imaginations, the formation of civic spaces and the re-definition of concepts.