Samir Harb

Born 1981 in Ramallah/Palestinian territories.

Samir Harb graduated from Department of Architectural Engineering of the Birzeit University in Ramallah in 2006. He finished his studies in 2011 with a master’s degree in arts at the Goldsmiths College in London/United Kingdom. He is an architect/cartoonist and has been working in the field of architecture and landscape in planning research in the West Bank since 2006.

He attempts to mix between cartoons and his architecture research which explore and criticize the processes of territorial transformation in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). Moreover he investigates the limits of architectural elements on the continuity of landscape in Palestine and translates the research into installations and drawings. He carried out several exhibitions in Rome/Italy, Ravenna/Italy, Oslo/Norway, and Amman/Jordan.

Samir Harb’s project focuses on the idea to re-construct the meta-narration in complex spatial orders. While architecture serves as the body of research in which the territorial, spatial networks, economical and political transformations are saturated. The graphic novel acts as a practice of reordering and shifting between things, events, dialogs, accounts, and archival material. His exhibitions represented a series of a strong graphic form, including maps, historical events, and main figures shaping the spatial order in the region. He took part in the Decolonizing Architecture (2010) with The Red Castle and The Lawless Line at 0047 in Oslo and We Have Woven the Motherlands with Nets of Iron (2011) in cooperation with Dr. Nicola Perogini at Giza Train Station in Amman.

He received the Granted Humanitarian Scholarship from the Goldsmiths College in 2011 and the Melina Mercouri International Prize for protection and management of cultural landscape on the West Bank for the group project Battir cultural and natural landscape management plan 2011.