Architect and historian Nadi Abusaada joins Tarwida Podcast to discuss Palestinian cities through material culture. He explores how Palestinians reconstruct history through the traces that remain, the challenges of curating Palestinian heritage, and why romanticizing the past can obscure the realities of the present.
What happens when a city itself becomes an archive? In this episode, architect and historian Nadi Abusaada takes us through different Palestinian cities to explore how material traces can help reconstruct a history marked by destruction, displacement, and erasure.
The conversation begins with Abusaada's installation for Amman Design Week 2026, which reconstructs a lost fountain from Jerusalem's Palace Hotel using one surviving ceramic tile designed by Armenian ceramicist David Ohannessian. He then discusses his work curating the Palestinian Museum’s permanent exhibition, which challenges the idea of permanence and instead explores the ongoing process of making Palestinian history.
From there, we explore Palestinian landscapes and agricultural terraces as evidence of generations of knowledge, before turning to Jaffa and its transformation from a cosmopolitan Palestinian city into a caricatured version of itself, used as a backdrop for Israeli cultural production and gentrification.
The episode ultimately asks what it means to preserve history without freezing it, to reclaim the past without turning it into a fantasy, and to build contemporary spaces that are connected to the places, people, and histories that came before them.
This episode is produced in collaboration with Amman Design Week, opening its fourth edition October 2–17 under the theme "Accumulations."
The episode was recorded on August 3rd, 2026. Watch the episode on YouTube here.
Tarwida is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture, and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists, including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, and more, about their very own Palestine.
In a nutshell, if you want to know more about (Creative) Palestine, this is the place to be.
Follow us on socials @tarwidapodcast
Relevant links & resources:
EPISODE CHAPTERS:
01:33 – Introducing Nadi Abusaada and his connection to Jerusalem
05:00 – David Ohannessian and the Palace Hotel fountain
08:27 – Reconstructing Palestinian history from fragments
11:15 – Rethinking the "permanent" exhibition at the Palestinian Museum
16:30 – Mustafa Al Hallaj: when sculpture becomes impossible to carry
18:52 – Searching for Palestine in Israeli and colonial archives
21:48 – Palestinian terraces as material evidence
26:21 – Jaffa: the destruction and gentrification of a cosmopolitan Palestinian city
32:51 – Is Palestinian architecture more Palestinian or Arab?
38:20 – Why do we romanticize the Arab past?