AAU ANASTAS is an architecture office based in Bethlehem, Palestine, run by several Anastas family members. Thinking of a project as a process is the common thread running through their work. The aim of the firm is to place their projects in a critical universal discourse while leaning on an anchored contextual approach. The studio has three entities: the architecture studio, a network of furniture-making around the city and a research department. Through their architectural practice, furniture-making and research-based projects – on topics spanning from material explorations to territorial investigations – AAU ANASTAS wishes to propose new relationships between building materials, artisanship, building knowledge and the design industry within Palestinian environments. Fed by the historical urban fabric surrounding them, the practice investigates territorial understandings of architecture within evolving political frameworks. They seek to tie links between different scales, periods and locations as a way of blending approaches and to place architecture at the intersection of local and global matters.

Source: Aga Khan Award for Architecture