Intro

The research is divided into two parts. The first is about the Archive Project Plot_436 in general, as a pivotal point in the research journey, focusing on the current form of the archive in Amman, research tools, and our position as researchers. The second part addresses the emerging questions surrounding the class dynamics of the archive, its physical limitations, and the image of architecture, aiming to conclude the research (or the idea of the archive) as a starting point.The overlap of the archive project with the research and documentation of public and middle-class housing “Traces of Socialism” played a key role in raising questions about the position of our own house in the archive. Both projects were instrumental in shaping and posing the questions explored in this current quest, making it necessary to reach a point of closure and critical outlook to the “attempt” to archive in the classical sense in the present time.

The research often shifts between the personal and the public, whether in my position as a researcher and the tools I use, or in the policies operating on multiple levels: local, global, and sometimes individual.

searching for Khayyam

Searching for Khayyam as a start
It is the ongoing research project annexed to the digital architectural archive Plot_436 by Nuha Innab.
“In 2011, together with two friends, we decided to revive the abandoned Al-Khayyam Cinema in Amman. This coincided with the time of the ‘Arab Spring.’ We weren’t fully aware of how revolutionary the act was, and, as is often the case with some revolutionary acts, we failed, at least temporarily.From there, the conversation about the archive began, a journey from the personal to the public and political, an attempt to reclaim. Perhaps also a documentation of different forms of failure. The failure to revive the cinema building turned into a desire to record and document as if this documentation is a way to reclaim the space and other spaces as well. But why this desire?”

We are here concerned with discussing the architectural archive as a tool of power, one that imposes a singular or homogenized image of collective identity. We discuss architecture as a translation of belonging, and of the intersection between the image of architecture and architecture itself, as a way to interpret our position as inhabitants in cities that both reject and accommodate us.Al-Khayyam Cinema, for example, was not publicly discussed as a deteriorating landmark until it became known for back-to-back screenings, and later for showing pornographic films, ultimately closing down in 1997. This narrative is closely tied to the emergence of a different user demographic, according to those who promote this theory, it remains unclear which came first. Some attribute this to the broader “decline” of downtown Amman starting in the early 90s until the early 2000s, which involved changes in the types and functions of shops, and the transformation of the commercial center overall. But why do we label this as "decline"? Why is any transformation in a system based on human congregation automatically associated with deterioration when the user base shifts to a lower economic class?Like many cinemas in the downtown area, the deterioration of Al-Khayyam is associated with the arrival of a new social class of users, thus, the narrative of deterioration is linked to a specific class. On the other hand, not all cinemas showing pornographic films are marked as fundamentally degraded. So, is this a kind of "curse" related to the cinema’s original state? Or rather, is it a class-based rejection of a new audience, one that eventually becomes a rejection of the space itself?If we are to speak of physical deterioration, namely the structural decay of the building, which is the real decline, this occurred only after the space was socially abandoned, and as a result of that abandonment. What once made Al-Khayyam significant, its association with a particular social class in its early years, ultimately led to its demise.

To reclaim

This building, like many similar cinemas, embodied a translation of capital and class privilege, however modest in comparison to today’s standards. Yet in its later years—those we came to know—it served as a refuge for many social groups, particularly workers, as noted by local residents. Perhaps it is from this perspective that the desire to reclaim a space like Al-Khayyam arises, whether physically or symbolically, through efforts to archive it and other similar buildings. This may be read as a longing to reclaim ownership, or to rewrite history, and look beyond the image of architecture toward the symbolic meanings that shape and transform it.

Al Khayyam +

“A cinema and theater built to the latest architectural style—designed to compete with the halls and theaters of Beirut and Cairo. A venue that accommodates 800 people, with a dining hall and café styled after the latest European trends. The strongest Arabic and international films and performances.”
—This is perhaps how the cinema was first advertised.
The searching for Khayyam began with an attempt to revive the cinema itself, as a multi-use space. But before we even reached the challenges of renovation and cost, we hit a fundamental barrier, could three people with no capital possibly take over a building like this in Amman? Logistically, it was impossible. At times, we were met with great enthusiasm, and at others with hostility or inexplicable resistance.

Al Khayyam ++

The archive wasn’t about collecting personal stories from a past era, but rather about understanding the image of architecture we see yet know so little about: modernist architecture, or buildings influenced by modernist movements and what came after. It focuses on a period in Amman’s history that was politically charged, particularly between the 1960s and 1980s, when the new identity of Amman was emerging.
The quest for information often involved finding ways around institutions that technically have the data but are denied access arbitrarily. At times, I had to pose as a graduate student or claim the research was part of a design studio course I was teaching. Sometimes I had to reach out through every contact I had to someone with some degree of influence, just to be granted access to documents, photos, and forgotten blueprints, long buried in the damp storage rooms of institutions, for Buildings we pass by every day. Nothing explains this except a kind of obsession with ownership, or perhaps a desire to reclaim power.Along the way, conflicting stories emerged about who currently owns Al-Khayyam Cinema. Strangely enough, the existing building wasn’t the first. The original owner (Al-Fayoumi) had built a cinema on the same site back in the 1940s. That structure was later demolished and replaced with the current one, a building whose design has sparked much speculation due to its distinctive architecture. We will return to that part of the story later. This leads us to a deeper issue in Jordan's research environment: the difficulty of accessing information. Much of it was never documented, and what remains depends on personal accounts and speculative narratives. Eventually, although we won’t get into too much detail here, we found out that the building was designed by a Jordanian structural engineer who had worked with the renowned Egyptian architect Sayed Karim—and was heavily influenced by his style.
What was truly exciting at the time was that the official narrative around Amman’s identity often excluded modernist architecture. Although it was of importance and celebrated at the time, now has become marginalized.

Archive as an authoritarian tool

We know that historically, alongside the tools used to write history, architecture has been one of the clearest manifestations of financial power, a tool that attracts and asserts control. In the post-mandate period in Jordan, the upper classes were formed from senior government officials, politicians, and army officers. [1]
At that moment, the actual and symbolic construction of the state went hand-in-hand with the rise of this class and everything it represented. As a result, history was written by this founding class, using its tools and narratives, which continue to shape the present. For example, oral histories in Jordan are often shaped by the class position of the storyteller. Narratives are told using selective fragments of history that mirror each individual’s understanding of place. So, if someone grew up in a “wealthy” area, like Jabal Amman or Zahran, they are likely to rely on narratives from that social sphere, often ignoring the complexities of how the city was actually formed. As a result, anything that doesn’t fit that narrative gets framed as a disruption, for instance, the formation of Al-Tafayleh neighborhood[2], or Palestinian refugee camps, or the so-called “decline” of the city center, if we can even use the word “decline.” They are documented as if they are separate events, disconnected from the broader political and economic dynamics shaping the city. There is a version of history that is celebrated and another that is reduced to “an incident,” a “problem,” something that changed the shape of the city, spoken about in that tone. The detachment of the classes who shaped the archive, and still control its tools, from their surroundings, has created a rupture in the narrative. But just because a detail or event is not acknowledged does not mean it did not happen.In the process of positioning and trying to belong in the city, one can become obsessed with ownership. We (as the working and middle-class) sometimes try to claim control through documentation. After all, we are rarely documented. As the archive rarely makes space for what is ordinary, daily, or mundane.A significant impetus behind current efforts in archiving stems from the absence of diverse architectural narratives within the academic study of Amman. Architectural education remains largely centered on Western paradigms, thereby marginalizing local experiences. Moreover, when architecture in Amman is discussed or documented, the focus tends to be on what is collectively accepted and institutionally recognized, buildings from the early establishment of the state, official structures, palaces, and villas associated with prominent families, or vernacular architecture as a technical example. We can see this clearly in the knowledge production around Jordanian architecture, or Amman’s identity, such as Al-Sharif Fawaz documented work, or “Villas of Amman” by Kamel Mahhadin’s, and Mohammad Al-Asad’s “The First Houses of Amman”. These works, while valuable, contribute to a curated architectural canon that privileges certain narratives over others. Consequently, this raises critical questions regarding the role of institutional power and its mechanisms in shaping, and controlling the archive and data in general.As Brien Brothman[3] puts it, the archive is not just a tool for collecting information, it is a way of assigning value to that information, which means proposing alternative narratives that challenge the official ones, if we gain access to the tools of documentation. But on the other hand, how can we access information when so much of it is restricted? And what does it mean to have an archive in the age of digital information? As Jacques Derrida asks: what will we archive using technology?[4]
Do we truly need the archive? Or is it simply a tool for reclaiming our position? And will what we choose to archive change in the future?Can we begin to think of the architectural archive as a movement, a form of reclamation? And is it possible for “us” to become the center of the narrative?
[1] (Hamarneh, 1985) class structure and inequality.
[2] Al-Tafayleh neighborhood, East of Amman, formed between the 40s and 50s due to the domestic migration from the south of Jordan (Al-Tafileh).
[3] BRIEN BROTHMAN, Orders of Value: Probing the Theoretical Terms of Archival Practice.
[4] Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1996.

The archive vs. the image

We can say that this research journey has become personal, leading to a desire to document and record, a process that is no less subjective than the official archive. It is shaped by images tied to identity, belonging, personal taste, and individual desire. But perhaps this is a preliminary exercise, a way to bring the archive to closure while prompting us to question the importance of the act itself as if it was more of a practice or a claim to rights than anything else.At the same time, we might say that for us, the “majority,” having access to the tools of archiving could be one of the most powerful forms of liberation from an authority. This takes us to the question; what if we archived using our own tools and narratives? And what would a chaotic, non-institutional non-iconic archive look like?

to archive what we like

The archive was never about collecting personal stories from another era, it was about capturing the image of architecture we see but know so little about: modernist architecture, or architecture influenced by modernist movements and their aftermath in Amman. This emerged during a period closely tied politically and economically to the formation years of the city of Amman, and one of the most politically charged and volatile eras in Jordan, between the 1960s and the 1980s. That identity has continuously shifted alongside economic and public policy changes.And by following examples of architectural archives in different Arab cities, it was intriguing how the idea of the "archive" is devoid of criticality towards the modernist project.
And here we go back to an important point, which is the individual taste of the archivist, and in the end, I was also following the image of architecture that I liked.

The archive as a museum

Will the archive of the future include “our” house? The linguistic choice of “our” here is a connotation to the majority, the mundane or the non-iconic which is the working and middle-class house/ vernacular.The architectural archives in West Asia, (Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon) in general are a Westernized and colonial project, giving who had the tools to archive at a certain time (dating back to British and French mandate), and we can still witness the colonial and now the neo-colonial influence around the image of architecture, in the built environment, and the academic education of architecture in local universities in Jordan.This research questions the positionality of “our” house in the future archive as an indication of how much the archive is liberated from class power, and colonial power. Looking at theories of decolonization, class-power, and data surveillance. The main question here consists of two parts, one is regarding the technology of the archive, and the second is regarding the architectural product beyond its representation. The proposition suggests that the future holds many possibilities for deconstructing the architecture archive. Dismantling the archive as a critical response to its authoritarian nature, built with exclusive and classist tools around the architectural image or “spectacle” that is produced by accumulated capital. Imagining a future archive that includes “our” house as a central subject, proposes a change in its mechanism/methodology of construction, by including the ordinary and the mundane, an idea that counters the essence of the archive’s nature. The research aims to imagine the architectural archive in the future as a decolonized and deinstitutionalized body.Let us look at a local case (Amman, Jordan). The "house" is not documented in the city of Amman unless it is for a particular class (see the documentation of Ammani Villas) (; Mahadin, Villa Architecture in Amman: The Current Spectrum of Styles), vernacular, and traditional houses for their construction, or “informal areas/ Refugee camps”, that are studied for their fabric and documented for their political and social transformation.At the same time, there is a noticeable absence of actual archives from institutions like the Housing Corporation (established in 1965) and the Urban Development Department (founded in 1980), which were merged in 1992 to meet the urgent need for modern housing for state employees, experts, and low-income residents [5]. The archive in Jordan has largely stopped evolving and has taken on the static, celebratory role of a museum. When it comes to architecture, most archival efforts outside this official scope are the result of individual efforts, either by architects documenting their own work or by independent researchers. Whether their work is recognized often depends on the fame of the architect.
In short, the image of architecture is shaped by shifting state policies, while the architectural experiences of the majority remain marginalized. We are not celebrating the image of architecture but rather looking with a critical eye on the image of architecture as a representation of economic power and public policy. The discussion around architecture is an indication of what will reside in the archive.
[5] Interview with Eng. Hind Ishaqat, Housing and Urban Development Corporation. 2016.

++

The alienation of architects from the image of architecture they study, is very much a reflection of their alienation from many narratives and archives, as the children of working-class and farmers.

dismantle the tools

And here the architecture office can play a major role in being a producer of archive materials that are mostly high-end designs, or designs for the upper-class, (architect’s fees are not affordable for mass designs). So, what happens to data produced outside of the office? The question of positionality becomes an overarching one, that progresses to the question of the physicality of the archive in the time of the internet (as a limitless space) and then to the archive of the future as liberated from space limitations and visual preferences, which is the image and class. We might propose the change in the image of the archive and narrative as a way to reclaim authority.“What do we archive using technology?” This question is based on one suggested by (Ketelaar 135)[6] reading (Jaques Derrida 9-63) [7]. Linking this to the first idea, will technology then change what we archive, meaning that the tools are more accessible, but how does this affect the nature of the archive? Taking these questions as a threshold to assume that using the tools of technology will eventually change the methodology we use for archiving and, therefore, what we archive.So, in order to ask the question of will “our” house be present in the future archive, we need to know where is it now as an image or data. And if the archive of the future will be in a digital space containing digital images, what type of digital image of architecture do we see now? And who produces it?
The idea of the archive and its limitations related to space and time contrasts the flux of images and data transported to our many devices daily. Google Maps contain street information and images of a significant number of buildings around us on ground level. Between satellite images, surveillance cameras, video games, and Metaverse built environment, why do we need to archive if everything is recorded? Imagining an archive beyond the image of architecture and the limitation of architecture itself. Moreover, a proposition to make use of open-source data and the tools available within the hands of the majority (like mobile phones) without so many steps that the archive requires, coding, structuring, storing, and combining. What if the archive of the future is built from the random images of architecture saved in cyberspace? In other words, proposing that the archive of the future is exempt from the idea of organizing and curating data. How would that affect the image of architecture, against the limitations of the archives we know? And how would that affect the idea of having a curated stored image of architecture?However, if the future archive will use the internet's capacity to counter the constructed physicality of the classic archive using the tools of big data (the unforgetting internet), we should also look critically at these tools, as they represent an authoritarian nature and are a product of political and colonial systems to control and use data. In this light, the research is looking at the archive with a critical eye and from a decolonizing perspective. So, in other words, to decolonize the archive, we need to question the tools that we are suggesting as an alternative to the traditional ways of archiving; using the digital (fabric) and big data strategies is also inviting the authoritarian nature these systems are built with and used by.
[6] Ketelaar, Eric. "Tacit Narratives: The Meaning of Archive." Archival Science (2001): 131-141. document.
[7] Jaques Derrida, Eric Prenowitz. "Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression." Diacritics (1995): 9-63. Document

intro 2

The second part proposes the idea of complete liberation from "authoritarian" archiving tools and builds on previous questions such as: What do we archive using technology? Suggesting the change of the archive’s material based on the change of tools, which is something clearly seen in the difference between internet content and television content, for example, or the photography between the digital images and analog camera images. But first, we need to delve into the dialectic of the celebrated “unfinished” image of architecture in contrast with what is forgotten as commercial and mundane.

the image of architecture before architecture

The proposition suggests that the future holds many possibilities for deconstructing the architecture archive. Dismantling the archive as a critical response to its authoritarian nature, built with exclusive and classist tools around the architectural image or “spectacle” that is produced by accumulated capital. If we assume that the future will provide us with unlimited storage capacity and easier methods for collecting information, we must first ask; What materials are currently being produced? Assuming they will be part of the future. However, we should not forget that the limitation of the archive is not only due to archiving tools but also architecture production itself. The question of where our house is now and what it looks like might be our guide to answering the main question.We cannot deny that the architectural archive -besides being an authoritarian and sometimes an inherited colonial representation- is also a classist one since archives are mostly built around the upper class's product and the fact that representation tools are never neutral[8]. Sometimes, the image of architecture speaks before architecture itself. Architecture allows for this transcendence and celebration of the image before the reality. A near example of this is the Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, whose reputation in the architectural world spread before she even executed any of her projects.Here, we can trace a local example of the image of architecture that entered the archive before being realized. 2008, which was a pivotal year marked by the economic crisis and the collapse of the real estate market in the United States, was named the year of “housing” by the Housing and Urban Development Corporation. During that time, the " Decent Housing for Decent Living" project was announced in 2006 by Royal recommendation, aimed at producing 100,000 housing units in the Marka area. However, the project was never completed due to the economic crisis. A smaller number of units were produced, and 60% of them were sold to the Teachers' Syndicate between 2014 and 2015. In the same year (2008), a study revealed that 52% of Jordanians depend on the government to provide housing [9]. The project stopped with a limited number of housing units compared to what had been announced. Meanwhile, massive towers and projects that would have transformed Amman into a "Dubai-like" city, which it had aspired to at one point, were also halted.The Greater Amman Municipality and other state institutions such as "Mawared"[10] celebrated a large number of massive development projects that depicted Amman as a three-dimensional image, with many of them ending up in magazines and newspapers. This three-dimensional image allowed architecture to be accepted, meaning we celebrated the image of architecture before we lived it. With simple research, we can find examples of this, such as the "Living Wall" in Amman on Araar Street, the Jordan Gate Towers at the 6th Circle, or the site of the Friday Market in Ras Al-Ain, which occupied the construction pit of the unfinished Opera house.[11] From here, we can examine the two images and analyze the differences: the target class, the architect, the investing company, the capital, etc. We can trace the image and its form, and analyze its varying positions in the narrative depending on its origin. Was it produced in a famous or lesser-known architectural office, for example?

Throughout this research, the idea of positionality, whether for the researcher or the material being researched, has always accompanied me, as well as its evolution over time.


[8] Perez-Gomez, Alberto. "The Revelation of Order, Perspective and Architectural Representation." Various, edited by Kester Rattenbury. This is Not Architecture. London-New York: Routledge, 2002. 3-23.
[9] Interview with Eng. Hind Ishaqat, HUDC, 2016.
[10] The National Resources Investment and Development Corporation (Mawared) was established under the Law No. (37) for the year 2000, and is directly lined to the Prime Minister, it was established for the purpose of developing treasury land that are earmarked for the use by the Jordanian Armed Forces (JAF).
[11] “Darat Abdullah”, is an opera house project designed by Zaha Architects. The project was halted due to the economic crisis, and then, the Friday market was relocated from Al-Abdali, (due to new development as well) to the construction pit.

Where is our house?

One of the forms of belonging or positioning oneself in the city is the form of our house. It is not only an indicator of economic status, but also an indicator of social formation, our connections to the place, and the moment we arrived in the city. What does our housing look like? Does it hide behind repetitive commercial facades that are globally considered as a solution to housing the masses of workers and newcomers, whether commercially or governmentally? Or does it represent an image and details that imply importance and evoke a desire for documentation and recording so that we may remember it?
This leads to the next question about our position in the archive, where does our architectural product stand? Where does commercial housing fit in the architecture archive?Here, we propose the question, can the archive of the future include your house? Can the architectural archive in Amman contain the houses of Dahyet Al-Rasheed, for example? Or Marka housing? In other words, can we "ourselves" be part of the archive?If your house is found in the archive, you would likely be part of the power that controls the narratives and their tools. We are talking about architecture as a translation of belonging, and the intersection of the image of architecture with architecture itself to project our position as residents in cities that reject and accept us.