Unchosen

By preserving objects that are usually considered unworthy, the project uses preservation as critical tool for rethinking official heritage.

Preservation plays a major role in the creation of a common identity based on the past. The Experimental Preservation approach questions the longstanding nature of preservation as a bureaucratic top-down policy.

The project chooses the neighborhood of Kiryat Eliezer in Haifa as a case study and reveals a hidden fuel infrastructure right underneath the historic “Ha’Meginim” Avenue. Choosing the unchosen and labeling the fuel pipeline as a historic layer worthy of preservation turns the concealed infrastructure into a monument. By designing a new excavated public system, the project distorts the authorized narrative and questions what is worthy of memory or oblivion.