THIS IS AN ARAB VILLAGE

The city of Nazareth, born as a village, represents a unique case of persistence of the Arab culture in the modern State of Israel. My thesis proposes the upgrading of the city through a system of light rail train on the main street and microarchitecture interventions placed on a new urban grid.

Despite its troubled history linked to ethnic-political events, Nazareth has retained its characteristic of being a religious destination for all pilgrimages to the territories of the Holy Land. However, the tourist flows through this small town of just 14km² are massive and badly managed. This is a phenomenon that ends up affecting negatively the identity of a community that feels alien to the Israeli political-administrative pattern. “This is an arab village” takes this problem and proposes a possible solution in terms of architecture and urban planning. This is a project that is carried out by places and architecture and also by people, by the issue caused by the search for a place to belong to. The light rail system that sets itself up on Paulus Ha-Shishi street takes as its model the similar system adopted in Jerusalem. The project aims to make the city of Nazareth easier to explore for tourists who for a few hours are in Nazareth, through some strategic stops on the road. Hence the idea of ??imposing a new quadrangular urban grid that refers, in its structure and recurring elements to the history of the Arab people. The structural pitch of the grid measures 99 meters. This is a number that often returns to Arab-Islamic culture. In the intersections of these axes of the new structural grid, micro-architectural elements are designed such as wind towers and prayers rooms. Bringing to mind some symbolic elements of tradition such as this is intended precisely to bring back to the Arab people living in Nazareth the identity they are, sadly, losing.