Abeer Seikaly Asks if Architecture is a Social Technology

Abeer Seikaly is many things. Thinker, maker, architect, artist are just some of the titles that follow her given names. Seikaly has a multidisciplinary practice that culturally empowers through a predominant discourse of architecture. ‘Weaving a Home’ and Seikaly’s practice as a whole begins with her relationship to her cultural identity, her Bedouin heritage, which can be traced back to her grandmother and a traditionally woven rug that’s also one of her family heirlooms. “The rug is representative of Jordan and it's kind of like the start of my practice, in terms of identifying the need to preserve cultural heritage and link back to our origins,” Seikaly notes. This rug was the catalyst for the creative realisation of one of Seikaly’s first works ‘Chandelier,’ a hand-embroidered tapestry inspired by this inherited family heirloom.

‘Chandelier’ led to the next work. The next. And the next. ‘Weaving a Home’ is connected to ‘Matters of Time’, ‘Matters of Time’ is connected to ‘Meeting Points’. These projects don’t follow a linear timeline nor do they seem to end in satisfaction of Seikaly’s inquiry. They are left without a closing bracket, and remain open through narrative threads that Seikaly weaves through continual questioning. “Asking questions becomes a creative methodology and a tool in order to expand and enhance the creative process,” claims Seikaly. “I mean, that's how we move through life, right? We progress because we ask questions. We're curious. We want to know.”

Is architecture a social technology? is the question that led to Seikaly’s best known work ‘Weaving a Home.’ The project began as a response to the Syrian refugee crisis that began in 2011. In the project’s first iteration, Seikaly’s ambition was to provide a dignified shelter inspired by Bedouin tents. Seikaly’s ‘tent’ and form of cradle-to-cradle architecture garnered international recognition and was shortlisted for the 2012 Lexus Design Award, a designboom competition run in collaboration with Lexus.

The tent itself differs from typical fabric architecture where fabric is draped over a structure. What Seikaly conceived is a construction method where the structure is woven within the fabric to become one performative system. Pre-stressed radial frames link together to form a membranous enclosure suitable to varying climatic conditions. The lightweight structure is durable and is able to collect water, harness energy and control ventilation in much the same way as a contemporary suburban dwelling.

This construction methodology was documented in a short film Seikaly made in 2019 called Matters of Time. The film showcases the cultural relevance of Bedouin weaving and traditional knowledge and pairs this matriarchal architecture of the Bedouin tent against concrete and steel structures built to sustain tourist ecologies. This dichotomy is a constant theme, and challenge, faced in Seikaly’s work, and ultimately expresses the shift from indigenous to more industrial ways of living. For example, there were several technical aspects of the tent’s design that needed resolving in order to achieve real-world application. “There was an expectation that the tent would be mass produced, immediately, as an emergency shelter,” Seikaly recalls. “But through the course of development, I realised that the shelter is not a product, but more of a social and cultural process that needs to be built with the community.” This notion of cultural inclusivity was significant to Seikaly’s tent concept and perhaps something overlooked by the global design community when recognising the project’s merit in providing a potential solution to housing crises.

As it stands, the tent is still in production. The scale model created by Seikaly is raising awareness through an exhibition at the Science Museum in London, offering visitors a tactile experience. But her objective is to build a full-scale model using traditional materials. “Structurally, it works,” Seikaly asserts. “The struggle has been finding a way to build it. I’ve been collaborating with a reputable engineering firm in London since 2015. We know it works. But the technology doesn’t exist to create the fabric within that form so unfortunately it’s something that remains in development,” she says.

The built environment is a manifestation of our cultural norms. It’s a reflection of who we are, who we were as people. Seikaly’s ‘Weaving a Home’ project, and arts practise as a whole, reappropriates traditional knowledge in a way that fits the contemporary world. Her work recognises how we shape architecture, and how architecture shapes us.

View Abeer’s work here and discover more inspiring stories like “Art as Medicine with Uchechukwu Ibemere,” here on Urth Magazine.