Elias & Yousef Anastas: Architecture, Design, and Research in Palestine

Elias and Yousef Anastas, Palestinian architects trained in Paris, returned to Bethlehem in 2010 to lead their family firm, AAU Anastas. They established an avant-garde laboratory reinterpreting traditional forms, materials, and techniques for contemporary living. Their first major project was the Edward Said Conservatory of Music in Beit Sahour, which reimagines the traditional hosh (courtyard) as a public square addressing the dense urban fabric. During construction, budget constraints led them to produce all furniture on-site with local craftsmen, spawning Local Industries, an industrial design department that minimizes energy use and optimizes resources. Two of its chairs are now in the Vitra Design Museum collection. In 2011, they added Scales, a research unit based in Paris, focusing on parametric installations that celebrate stone's structural properties, once central to Palestinian construction but now reduced to cladding. Their Stone Matters pavilion in Jericho (April 2017) serves as a prototype for the future el-Atlal artist residency complex. AAU Anastas completed the Toulkarem Courthouse and is starting construction on the Hebron Courthouse. Scales is exhibiting the While We Wait pavilion in Dubai, while Local Industries collaborates with Middle Eastern designers on a 2018 collection. The brothers aim to work globally, starting from the Middle East.