project: manifesto

What happens when you cease to exist, even while you breathe in and out. What happens, when no one feels your pain, even when you’re shouting your lungs out. What happens when the power structure in your city wipes out your existence; you have no one to go to, no place to be. My.Kali Manifesto Project, a joint project between Project: manifesto and My.Kali Magazine, attempted to address this situation occurring in Abdoun’s most controversial poverty pocket: the forgotten Hay Al Qayseyyeh.

Abdoun: the inland island of Amman where the richest of the rich live. It sits right on the defining line between East Amman, and West Amman. In Abdoun, a parallel world, most Ammanis don’t get to experience. The expensive restaurants and cafes, the houses castle like house with no sidewalks and tons of security cameras, Taj Mall that sells labels many didn’t even knew existed, the embassies, the gyms, the banks. In Abdoun the crème de la crème of the refined Jordanian community lives. Just few hundred meters away from where all those fancy cars, and their glits and glamour, is a neighborhood everyone pretends doesn’t exsists. This forgotten little corner is known as Hay Al Qayseyyeh, or the neighborhood of Qayseyyeh, and sits in the valley below. And it’s rather fascinating.

The Qayseyyeh’s agony started in 2008. There appears to be two non-confirmed stories carried around in whispers, which we will give you full discretion to take into heart, or dismiss.

The first one goes as such: when the brilliant Mr. Planner, AKA Abu Ahmad, was having his regular morning Hummus and Falafel breakfast in the Greater Amman Municipality offices, a Falafel piece fell on the ground, and while attempting to quickly catch the rolling Falafel and hindered by his fat belly, he ended up spilling the hummus plate causing a tiny stream of olive oil over the Northern Abdoun Master Plan erasing the fine boxes drawn to indicate the small houses present in the area, and right there the pure genius idea came to be: A classy ‘Abdoun Corridor’ of parks and shops that will end up earning the government half a billion Dinars.

The second story is still strikingly similar. The fat rich businessman Mr. Hussam woke up one morning with one thing on his mind, a long thin loaf of French Baguette bread with butter and jam smeared all over. However, the Mrs. knew what he was craving, and after a long speech about his cholesterol and over-eating, she ordered him with her firm vibrating squeakily voice to get up at once and swim few laps in their private swimming pool. Cranky and angry, he marched out and noticed the awfully thin man running after his sheep in the valley under his villa, and right there the pure genius idea came to be: a shinny long thin loaf  tower of french international style with buttered shinny glass facades that will wipe out all the thin people around him.

Regardless of what you choose to believe, the Greater Amman Municipality took the decision to tear down the homes of 200 of the poorest families in Hay Al Qayseyyeh with no proper compensation if present at all. After few years dragging those simple people in the legal system, the Bedaya court ruled to change the compensation sum from 80 JDs/m2 to 750 JDs/ m2. The poorest of these families who built their ‘shelters’ informally will end up with no compensation at all. Now those families are relocating to the street side walks.

Now Hay Al Qayseyyeh holds shadows of what were once were homes for the poor, transforming it to a surreal limbo. Each one of those raggedy houses holds, on average 3 families, 20 people, mostly working on collecting dry bread and metal junk, and sometimes raising cattle. When you visit, all your senses are attacked by the ‘ignored on purpose’ open sewer pipes, the kids have to cross-over with their bare feet to go to school, or play in the left-overs of a half torn building.

The overly successful Greater Amman Municipality never once gave a fleeting thought to the people of the area, while they made their decision to take over their homes and lives. Never even considered fair compensation, or a reasonable relocation plan. Never thought of a proper transitioning development project. This makes me question the value of a human, a poor human, in the eyes of the ‘system’. Those families have every legal document you need to exist, just like you and me. Their businesses permits were legal, renewed on time. Their only fault was them to be born poor.

The Hay Al Qayseyyeh community knocked on every existing door. They went to court, pleaded with the Government, protested, wrote to every politician, newspaper, blog, online magazine, public and private TV stations.  All they got, is complete a blind eye and a mechanical answer asking them to apply (no promises, or good intentions) to some governmental housing projects, which builds an average of 96 houses a year for smaller families.

In the My.Kali Manifesto Project, we wanted to provoke. Words are not doing it anymore. We wanted people to pay attention, to listen. Hay Al Qayseyyeh is a place in transition of ‘class’. Money was talking, loud. So, we decided to spray paint over 5m2 of stencils of world known ‘rich’ labels over the torn walls transitioning to fancy places, and play on the irony it generates. If only you can think of the price the  Al Qayseyyeh community are paying for the concept of the Diors and Chanels. The Hay Al Qayseyyeh community exists and its real. They are moms and dads who love, they are school children who solve math problems, they are grandmas who tell bedtime stories.

by Dima Maurice

This started as an argument between my friend, Michel, and I while driving past the Le Royal one day: Why is it we can’t imagine New York without the Guggenheim or the Rockefeller, yet we can easily imagine Amman without the Le Royal and the twin Jordan Gate towers? Why is that most, and I stress on most, Ammani Architects reject the current contemporary iconic discourse of the city. What makes an icon? How come all nation take pride in their tallest buildings, and we don’t? What is it that really..really.. makes us proud as residents of Amman?

In spite of the interlocking, inter-winded, multi-dimensional strata that make up our city, most people perceive Amman as the city made up of endless mountains of mundane modern white stone boxes. Thus, so to break the redundancy, and create a sense of place, in addition to the much needed pride and power, big buildings are sought after. After all we are a nation that appreciates the big.

A transformation was needed! A remote utopian vision of what the city should look like was the reference, to become more contiguous to our neighboring plastic metropolitan cities. The Burj, the Iskan building mutations started growing, and later on the King Abdullah Mosque and aliens like Le Royal and last, never the least, 6th circle towers­­. No one can defend their existence; one has to simply live with them!

They exist! And their design formula: hulk-ish scale, strange unique geometry, distant metaphor, uncomfortable presence and a vague program. Who cares what’s it for anyway! Designed so not to fit.

The 6th Circle Jordan Gate Towers that was built on the site of one of the very few vanishing public gardens in the city. The screwed a residential neighborhood is a great example to the hefty price people pay. Although still in construction phase, it succeeded in creating a dead zone around it, in addition to ignoring major problems of traffic and infrastructure in addition to few more serious environmental issues.

Another example, Le Royal: the Iraqi babel tower manifested in Amman. Even though stone was used, rather than a glass envelope, to blends with the adjacent mountain and its tiny white stone block, yet its geometry failed it.  The Le Royal did everything right; but it stayed an alien!

I understand that cities are not monolithic, especially boundary-less cities like Amman. They act as complex living organisms; they interact and survive mutations within their fabric. However, we have the talents of embedding the huge in a way to eat the neighborhoods around it and takes over them.

I’m not criticizing icons, I’m criticizing the how and where and when and what they represent. Why do we build them here and there, for postcards sake?

Project:manifesto invites you for the screening of  BABA A sit down with Ali Maher On Wed, 27th of Feb, 2013 at 7 pm Hosted by Makan مشروع: مانيفستو يدعوكم لحضور عرض  بابا جلسة مع علي ماهر يوم الأربعاء ٢٧ شباط ٢.١٣  الساعة السابعة مساء مكان العرض: مكان

  إعلان الفيلم

سيستضيف "مشروع: مانيفستو" فريق عمل"إنعكاس" في حوار حضري ٤. ستنحدث معاً  عن الفن الحضري وإمكاناته وآثاره على النسيج العمراني والهندسة المعمارية في عمان، بالإضافة إلى رسائل هذا الفن الكامنة في شوارعنا. سنتحدث عن "إنعكاس" كنموذج أولي لمشروع للفن حضري المجتمعي في عمان، وسنستضيف بعض الفنانين المشاركين، بالإضافة إلى عدد قليل من الضيوف الخاصة بنا.  شاركونا بحضوركم يوم الأربعاء، ٦ شباط،٢٠١٣ دارة الفنون - المختبر

كمصممين وخلاقين ندّعي الفضيلة بتصميماتنا دائماً، ونروج لتمكين المجتمعات من خلال فراغات جميلة وفعالة في النسيج الحضري. شاهد هذا الفيديو المهم وشاركنا برأيك؟ مين فينا إللي بعيق التاني؟

A picture for the Sakakini Neighborhood in 1960s cairo.The Sakakini is the name of one of the oldest prestigious Egyptian families from Syrian origin in Cairo.The Palace in the middle is the Skakini Palace that was built in 1897, that still exists yet not maintained properly. So we in Project: manifesto team had one tiny argument once we saw this picture, and posted on facebook asking it looks more like Jabal Amman, Malhaas hospital or Ma'mouniyyeh park in Jabal Al Hussein?

Team Dima:

On one hand, Jabal Amman's Malhaas Hospital relates to the Sakakini neighborhood in the sense of a building of importance being in the center, and the rest of the neighborhood of less important buildings organically radiates from that center,in a radial configuration forming a perfect circle.

Team Hamza:

On the other hand,Ma'mouniyyeh neighborhood is this dense radial configuration of a neighborhood that organizes around the kidney shaped void, rather than a building mass of the urban lansdscape.However, its dense radial configuration is very similar to Sakakini Neighborhood in old Cairo.

Manifesters, are you up for yet another competition?? This time its in Beirut by The Outpost magazine.Rethink and envision the design of the reclaimed waterfront Normandy landfill in the Beirut Central District, Lebanon.For more information check out this link:

http://the-outpost.com/pdf/TheOutpostxNormandy.pdf هل أنتم مستعدون لمسابقة أخرى؟ هذه المسابقة من قبل مجلة الأوت بوست في بيروت.في هذه الم

سابقة تدعوكم لإعادة تصور و إحياء واجهة بروت البحرية وهو مكب النورماندي  :للمزيد من المعلومات أنقر على الرابط أدناه http://the-outpost.com/pdf/TheOutpostxNormandy.pdf