Koor is a studio for research, design and learning on architecture and urbanism in Palestine — a space for exploring new intersections between knowledge and practice through experimental, transdisciplinary methods. We hold that engaging the question of the present and future of sustainable building and urban life rooted in the land begins with engaging a rich and extended history of diverse urban relations, practices and elements inside Palestine and with its surroundings. And we see the possibility of building an active, critical body of knowledge and practice around all of this through pedagogical paths that cross fields of knowledge — the arts, the applied sciences and the humanities — and through interwoven forms of cultural, research and community work.
The Koor Team
Lana Judeh| Co-founder
An architect and independent researcher with wide academic and professional experience across architecture, urban studies and cultural production. She was a faculty member in the Department of Architectural Engineering at Birzeit University between 2016 and 2024, and worked for six years at Riwaq on revitalisation projects for historic centres in Palestinian villages and on the publication of the conservation guide for the historic city centre of Ramallah. Lana holds an MA in Architecture, Cultural Identity and Globalisation from the University of Westminster in the United Kingdom and a BSc in Architectural Engineering from Birzeit University. She is an editorial board member of the Arab Urbanism journal, where she co-edited (with Mohammad Abu Al-Rub) a special issue on everyday experiences of infrastructure in the Arab region. Her research interests circle around topics in social geography such as urban and rural commons, exploring how architecture and urban planning interact with the social, economic, political and environmental worlds of Palestine and the region. In 2024–2025 she worked as an exhibition curator and as organiser of a seminar series on Palestinian urbanism with Saqiya and the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre.
Iyad Issa| Co-founder
An architect, researcher and curator whose work investigates the shared spaces between art, architecture and urbanism in the landscape of the city. He teaches design at Birzeit University. His recent work explores marginalised aspects of modernist history and urban form in the cities of Palestine and its neighbours through research and research-based artistic interventions. He has taken part in numerous exhibitions and artistic and research projects on architecture and urbanism as curator, artist and researcher — among them Entangled Margins, and as co-curator of Riwaq's participation in the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Iyad has contributed to the planning and implementation of many revitalisation projects in Palestine and published research on them. He has also published several studies and articles, including in the Jerusalem Quarterly (Institute for Palestine Studies), on the reproduction of knowledge about the geography of Palestine in the twentieth century through maps, and on reading the urban development of Palestinian cities.
Mohammad Abu Al-Rub| Co-founder
An architect, researcher and faculty member in the Department of Architectural Engineering at Birzeit University in Palestine. He holds an MA in Urban Practices from the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland and a BSc in Architectural Engineering from Birzeit University. His work and teaching focus on the relationship between infrastructure, spatial practices and local knowledge within colonial and historical contexts. His research interests include tracing material, environmental and social flows and networks and their effect on architectural and spatial form. Mohammad also takes part in initiatives seeking to reimagine the tools of documentation and cartography through critical approaches centred on community practices, oral history and the view from within.