Yara Sharif

Yara Sharif is a practicing architect and an academic with an interest in design as a means to facilitate and empower “forgotten” communities, while also interrogating the relationship between politics and architecture. Combining research with design her work runs parallel between the architecture practice NG Architects, London and the design studio at the school of architecture, University of Westminster. Sharif has co-founded Palestine Regeneration Team (PART). PART is a design-led research group that aims—through speculative and live projects—to search for creative and responsive spatial possibilities in Palestine to heal the fractures caused by the Israeli occupation. Sharif’s work on Palestine has won a number of awards including the 2014 Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction for the Middle East Region, RIBA’s President’s Award for Research for Outstanding PhD Thesis 2013, RIBA’s President’s Award for Research 2016 on “Cities and communities” category. Sharif’s recent publication is Architecture of Resistance: Searching for spaces of possibilities under the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict (2017).