Saja Amro is an architect, educator, and designer based in the Netherlands and Palestine. Her work investigates the influence of spatial design on social dynamics in education. In her practice, she disrupts traditional classroom structures, aiming to rebuild them on the principles of radical pedagogy. As a tutor at the Architecture Department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Saja uses the classroom as a place to collaborate with her students and reimagine spaces inspired by popular education methodologies, and roots of indigenous cultures. Saja co-founded Common Ground, a collaborative artistic gastronomic project focusing on using the dining table and the kitchen as research laboratories and spaces for knowledge production and exchange.
30 walls
Spatial illustrations; analogue and digital (10 minutes)
30 walls is unpacking the underlying ideology of standardisation in schooling systems and the spatial hierarchies it creates. In a rectangular classroom, the composition of desks is oriented to face a black chalkboard, and the walls surrounding this cosmos define its physical and mental borders, all designed by architects to serve the functions of the oppressive educational system. Like all oppressive systems and entities, so must school buildings be demolished.
Readings
Into Coffee Grounds
Tire Commune, Izmir, Turkey 2024
Inspired by the rich history of coffee houses as hubs for political change and revolution, we embrace their legacy as centers for news dissemination, gossip, and the production of knowledge. Coffee houses have long been seen as dangerous environments, provoking new ideas, thinkers, and radicals.
In this spirit, coffee becomes a metaphor for digestion in the intestines, with coffee grounds serving as a medium for reflection and introspection.The shapes formed in the coffee grounds facilitate internal conversations, provoking introspection. Just as we read the clouds, observe the movement of the trees, and interpret the cracks in the ground, we find meaning in the radical patterns left by our “brain juice.” Through this ritual, we continue the tradition of coffee houses as catalysts for thought and transformation.
Ceremonies of hospitality
Foam Amsterdam 2024
Food Performance
Celebrating the exhibition Fonāna at Foam. The making of the green aromatic drink – Arabic coffee or Qahwa قهوة -, is steeped in time-honored traditions, each playing a role in shaping this beverage’s unique flavor and cultural importance. An immersive sensory journey through the art of roasting, grinding, spicing, blending, boiling, and the culminating ceremonial moment of serving. As you savor your coffee and indulge in a bite of date, a heartwarming conversation about memories of hospitality and its connections with food traditions and social etiquette unfolds.
Labour of Love
2022-Ongoing
Amsterdam W139. BAK. Kunsthal Gent. Notte Verde
In ‘Labour of Love,’ CG extends an invitation to join in the timeless ritual of preparing a traditional Palestinian dish – Rolled Vine Leaves, or ‘ورق عنب’. This labor-intensive and contemplative process offers a space for mourning, introspection, and communal bonding. Together we weave stories of liberation, what does a free Palestine and by extension, a free world look like?
Common Ground
Food Performance
Amsterdam 2021
We gather around the fire and eat the flowers of the earth accompanied by the sour roots that came before them. The roots that nurture us and the flowers we grow into. In the context of “All Good Things Must Begin: Roots and Routes”, We have prepared a feast that looks into the common ground beneath us as Palestinian and Valencian artists and cooks. With our contribution to this event we hope to give space for love to grow around the food we eat together.
Spells and mantras from the displaced
Disclosing Discomfort. Amsterdam. October 2021
by Lama Aloul & Sala Amro
These markings are spells. Read them out loud, text them to your loved
ones, memorize them, and sing them until the day Palestine is ftree and Palestinian refugees finally return to their homeland.
Student? Assembly?
Sandberg Institute. Amsterdam. March 2022
Student? Assembly? is an organizational process that experiments with alternative typology-gies of what an assembly could look like, prioritizing participation and self-expression to togetherness, care, intimacy, and joy. While eliminating hierarchies through spatial intervention. The assembly proposed a model of documenting called harvesting.
Cymatics: Interactive Exhibit
Ramallah 2019
This exhibit was inspired by Cymatics studies, a scientific term given by scientist Hans Jenny to a study aimed at visualizing sounds, where sound waves can be made visible by exposing some solutions or powders (such as water, sand, starch solution, etc.) scattered on metal surfaces or Plastic, or even rubber membrane, to rearrange their positions to form consistent, periodic shapes that change as the frequencies they are exposed to change.
Soundscape: Interactive Installation
Echo Exhibition. Science Studio. Ramallah 2019
This installation represents a field study of regions in and around Ramallah, constituting regions with diverse geographical, historical, political, and natural contexts. This study is based on listening tours, during which a group of sounds that form the sound surroundings of these different regions are recorded, some of which are rural and natural, and others are residential, industrial, or commercial.
Link to Recordings: https://soundcloud.com/user-947710942/sets Can we insert the recordings?
