Natura March - April 2013 | Page 57

Palestinian residents feel at home. The textured yet simple limestone surfaces also provide a backdrop for the art on display. Colored ceramic tiles with patterns similar to the local carpets are used to cover the walls of the reception area, café and library, another feature of the project inspired by Islamic arts and local traditions. Donaire Arquitectos winning design proposal for the A.M. Qattan Foundation is in search of an economic and rational plan inflected by the practical and aesthetic features of the local Palestinian vernacular architecture. Innovative use of local limestone integrated into a complex glass façades introduce qualities of light and space that is balanced with a limestone plinth and walls that emphasize solidity. For the newly developing civic life of Palestine and the Middle East this equilibrium between space and solidity, lightness and heaviness, achieved through stone architecture is a metaphor for the effort to develop an enlightened society grounded in the values of tradition. MART - NİSAN 2013 / MARCH - APRIL 2013 • NATURA 57