Yara Sharif is a practicing architect and an academic, she is a lecturer at Oxford Brookes University and a partner at NG Architects London, an award winning practice that has developed a reputation of working on sustainable community projects with specific interest in issues of cultural identity and responsive design. Her work generally stretches internationally where she mainly looks at design as a means to facilitate and empower forgotten communities, while also interrogating the relationship between politics and architecture. Sharif has co-founded Palestine Regeneration Team (PART); a design-led research group that aims to search for creative and responsive spatial practices in Palestine. Her current research by design has been granted the 2013 commendation award - RIBA's President Award for Research for Outstanding PhD Thesis.
'In this subtle, compassionate, and clear-eyed book, Yara Sharif offers architecture as both a tactic of physical resistance and a contesting form of knowledge and possibility - a critical mnemonic for a culture under erasure. Her profound mappings of Palestine beautifully harmonize space and life and, with courageous modesty, advance creativity and improvisation in defense of a beleaguered, precious, normality'. Michael Sorkin, Distinguished Professor of Architecture, City College of New York, President and Founder of Terreform, and Principal of Michael Sorkin Studio