Category: Analogue life

  • 10.10.10 One Day On Earth!

    One Day on Earth Participant Trailer from One Day On Earth on Vimeo. On 10/10/10, the entire world is being documented as part of an ambitious project called One Day on Earth (www.onedayonearth.org). Through their website, filmmakers, students, teachers and everyday inspired citizens representing EVERY country in the world have all coming together to film…

  • Rescue downtown Amman from the “Bab Al-7ara” attack!

    King Faisal Square in 1958. From Getty Images: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/3378711/Hulton-Archive Does the Amman Municipality and do Ammanis want that Amman’s downtown is turned into a a cheap-looking touristic area? Because that’s EXACTLY what is happening at an alarming speed. I had breakfast at Hashem, the famous Hummous and Fuul restaurant yesterday and then went for a…

  • Open City: Refuge urbanism in Amman, Cairo, Beirut, Istanbul

    The Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts in Jabal Luweibdeh will host the exhibition “Open City: Refuge Urbanism” which is part of the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2009-10 (IABR), opening today Sunday 18 July 2010, at 6 pm. Refuge Urbanism (Part of the Diwan Collaborative Research Network, directed by Philipp Misselwitz & Can Altay)…

  • Agave blooms after 18 years in Jordanian village

    In 1992, my mother planted a little Agave Americana in my parent’s farm in the Jordanian village Aluk, 25 km north of Amman. Over the years, this agave grew and grew to a degree where my parents started thinking of removing it. Agaves have very sharp spikes that can give you nasty pain and can…

  • Rebooting Jordan: do we need a bigger kick in the butt than what happened in Salt?

    The incidents in Al-Salt are just the tip of the iceberg. Wherever we look in Jordan there are signs: rising family and tribal violence, apathy, lack of quality and a way of life divorced from our real means and natural and human resources. The decay is affecting much of our national life: from the disastrous…

  • Teacher, artist and, yes, the Sheikh of Amman!

    When the self proclaimed “Sheikh of Amman” comes walking through the door at the SYNTAX offices, its not an ordinary day, especially when he comes unannounced. It’s now over 21 years that I’ve met Ali Maher for the first time, on my first day of being an Architecture student at the University in Jordan, sometime…

  • Burning the spring: how Amman municipality workers tore out the grass and littered our street

    I just want to follow up on my post from a few days ago, when I wrote about how Amman municipality workers tore out the grass near my place of work (for fire prevention reasons). Here is what happened afterwards. All the torn grass was piled on the sidewalk, where it has bee laying for…

  • ArabNet, Beirut and ‘Being Arab’

    Visiting Beirut is always a bitter sweet experience. My last trip to Beirut to attend ArabNet, the region’s first web business conference was my third trip to the city in 8 years, each of which had the duration of 48 hours. Each time I visit beirut I leave with a book, always from Librarie Antoine,…

  • What’s GAM’s problem with the spring?

    We have been blessed with good rain in Amman this year. Spring is all around us. Amman’s empty plots of land (and there’s many of those) are full of green life. Flowers, grasses, butterflies and bees are creating little heavens where usually you see urban rubbish. The scene above is what I see everyday as…

  • On physical junk, mental junk and the joys spring cleaning

    We’re SYNTAX. And we create junk. Celebrating 12 years of junk production. And 10 years of accumulating it in one office. We’re spring cleaning. Read more in the SYNTAX:CONTEXT blog.

  • NewThink Theater: Infecting Jordan with the virus of positive action [with VIDEO]

    Here’s something that keeps Jordan interesting: there is always someone or some group initiating something. Regional politics might be depressing. Local politics too. The economy is not doing great. There are setbacks, deterioration, and the “I don’t care” attitude all around us. But at the same time, someone is launching a new initiative.. startup.. band..…

  • Counterparts – Ammani House 28 in transition

    Photo: Dina Haddadin House 28 on the corner of Rainbow Street is in a state of flux. The old landlady and her old, bed-ridden husband have passed away. It seems like yesterday she was showing Ahmad Sabbagh and me through the apartment under the main house. That apartment became what I called the “SYNTAX house”.…