Weizman, Eyal

PERSONAL:

Education: Studied at the Architectural Association in London; London Consortium, Birkbeck College, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Centre for Research Architecture, Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, England; fax: 44-20-7919-7398. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Architect and academic. Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria, professor of architecture; Goldsmiths, University of London, London, England, director of the Centre for Research Architecture. Also has a private architecture firm with Rafi Segal in Israel since 1999.

AWARDS, HONORS:

James Stirling Memorial Lecture Prize, Canadian Centre for Architecture and the London School of Economics, 2006-07.

WRITINGS:

Yellow Rhythms: A Roundabout for London, 010 Publishers (Rotterdam, Netherlands), 2000.

(With B'Tselem) Jewish Settlements in the West Bank: Built-Up Areas and Land Reserves, B'Tselem (Jerusalem, Israel), 2002.

(With Yehezkel Lein) Land Grab: Israel's Settlement Policy in the West Bank, translated by Shaul Vardi and Zvi Shulman, B'Tselem (Jerusalem, Israel), 2002.

(Editor, with Rafi Segal) A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture, designed by David Tartakover, Verso (New York, NY), 2003.

Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation, Verso (New York, NY), 2007.

Editor-at-large of Cabinet magazine.

SIDELIGHTS:

Eyal Weizman is an architect and academic. Weizman studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and eventually earned a Ph.D. from the London Consortium, Birkbeck College. He opened a private architecture practice with Rafi Segal in 1999 in Israel. He also served as a professor of architecture at Vienna, Austria's Academy of Fine Arts. He later became the director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths at the University of London. He has written a number of books on architecture and serves as an editor-at-large with Cabinet magazine.

In 2003 Weizman edited A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture with Rafi Segal. The book, designed by David Tartakover, was banned by the Israeli government shortly after its initial printing and those copies were destroyed. Using maps, diagrams, photographs, and essays, the book shows how Israeli architecture is used as part of state strategy to reconstruct the physical landscape in order to control Palestinian movement between their settlements. Safaa Nhairy, reviewing the account in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, commented that "as much as do these official Israeli practices, the banning of the first edition of A Civilian Occupation proves that architecture in Israel is far from a politically naive activity."

Weizman published Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation in 2007. The account looks at how Israel controls transportation throughout both political parts of the country with constant checkpoints and monitoring stations. Ron Jacobs, writing in the Dissident Voice, remarked that "Weizman's text is a dense, yet readable work. While a familiarity with the Israeli occupation and its history is useful to one's understanding of his claims, it is not essential. Nor is it necessary for the reader to be well-grounded in architectural theory. Fascinating in its detail and often alarmingly straightforward in its conclusions, Hollow Land lays bare the intelligent brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and its architectural engineering."

Jay Merrick, reviewing the book in the London Independent, commented that the book generates "extraordinary, and at times surreally uncomfortable, conclusions. If we are entitled to wonder what architecture, infrastructure, and town planning have to do with warfare and human exclusion, the wonder has long gone by page 185." Ben White, reviewing the account in the New Statesman, found that the "architecture of occupation is thoroughly analysed" in Hollow Land.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Architects' Journal, July 5, 2007, Jay Merrick, review of Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation, p. 45.

Cabinet, winter, 2002-03, Sina Najafi and Jeffrey Kastner, author interview.

Dissident Voice, July 18, 2007, Ron Jacobs, review of Hollow Land.

Guardian (London, England), July 25, 2002, Esther Addley, author interview.

Independent (London, England), June 28, 2007, Jay Merrick, review of Hollow Land.

London Review of Books, May 24, 2007, review of Hollow Land, p. 36; August 2, 2007, Yonatan Mendel, review of Hollow Land, p. 13.

Nation, July 16, 2007, James Ron, review of Hollow Land, p. 40.

New Statesman, January 14, 2008, Ben White, review of Hollow Land, p. 56.

Socialist Worker, August 25, 2007, Anindya Bhattacharyya, author interview.

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 1, 2004, Safaa Nhairy, review of A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture, p. 92.

ONLINE

Centre of Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London Web site,http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/architecture/ (May 20, 2008), author profile.

Frieze Foundation Web site,http://www.friezefoundation.org/ (May 20, 2008), author profile.

Moving Cities Web site,http://movingcities.org/ (January 27, 2008), Bert de Muynck, author interview.

Roundtable,http://roundtable.kein.org/ (May 20, 2008), author profile.