Pinnwand Universität, Architektur und Urbanistik, Bau- und Umweltingenieurwissenschaften, Kunst und Gestaltung, Medien, Sprachen, Bibliothek, Piazza
UNBUILT: the desert as public space - a lecture performance
UNBUILT. The Desert as Public Space
Lecture Performance by Hussam Hasan und Ameer Masoud (Jordan)
ACC Galerie, 20.04.2026, 7:00PM
Free entry, in English
"The desert is an oasis of contemplation — an isthmus between total freedom and existence" — Ibrahim al-Koni
The desert resists permanence. A constantly changing landscape. The Bedouin adapted their lives to its logic: reading space through paths, seasonal memory, and wasim — markings inscribing water ownership across generations without deeds. Their Nabati poetry reflects this same condition. It lived orally, passed from mouth to ear. Never fixed, never still.
Yet in 1926, a Bedouin leader built a fort in Jordan's southern desert, resisting a colonial order that prescribed nomadic peoples as anti-architecture. Seventy-four years later, the British erected a fortress in Wadi Rum to stage a fantasy: the desert as barren and wild. It mistook the unbuilt for the uninhabited. Both structures failed. The desert took over.
For al-Koni, "the desert has everything." Time in the desert does not move — past, present, and future exist at once. The desert unbuilds public space, suggesting that public spheres can emerge through presence and shared time rather than permanence.
Monday Night Lecture is a format in collaboration with the programme Public Art and New Artistic Strategies, and ACC Galerie.