On Friday 18 June, a cross-section of the best Fifth Year students from the Diploma Programme presented their projects to the entire school community in a live-streamed event, a recording of which is now available to view on YouTube. Following assessment by the Diploma Committee, Diploma with Honours was awarded to Jumanah Bawazir (DIP12), Philip Gharios (DIP9), Shaha Raphael (DIP17) and Zaina Sweidan (DIP13). AA Diploma Honours is the AA's highest award; we extend our warmest congratulations to all recipients, and thank you to everyone who contributed to this celebration of student work during 2020–21.

The Diploma Honours Recipients shared summaries of their projects, which you can read below, and you can watch all of the Diploma Honours presentations on the AA’s YouTube channel.

Jumanah Bawazir (DIP12) was awarded Diploma Honours for her project ‘HAQ Project 73 – A Reframing of Palestine’, which explores platforms for community solidarity amongst the Palestinian diaspora.

Jumanah commented that: ‘The practice “HAQ” is an Arabic word for both truth and rights. Truth is subjective and can be debated depending on the perspective one focuses on, but human rights are non-negotiable, especially when the power dynamics are imbalanced. Therefore, as someone who is half Palestinian, and has witnessed the disparity between my community’s lived experiences and what the media portrays, this project was very important for me to work on and communicate.’

‘Since 1948, the framing of the Palestinian narrative has been in the hands of “the other” relative to the Palestinian. Western imperialism has caused media institutions to skillfully frame the narrative with propaganda by means of language and imagery, muffling out Palestinian voices and adding layers of distortion.

HAQ is here to reframe Palestinian narratives in order to evidence land ownership through producing and broadcasting accounts. The project produces a virtual alternative Palestinian collective narrative for the diasporic community. Created by and through the community’s value system of the home, HAQ underlines political, social and cultural values. Providing a new platform avoids media censorship, empowers and unifies the Palestinian collective.

Through shifting the scale and language of the images used by mainstream media, the project proposes an alternative system of communication, putting the “story” in the hands of the Palestinian. HAQ positions itself in recording narratives across three generations allowing people to read and watch the accounts from different parts of Palestine from 1948 – today.

As the censorship of documentation of testimonies of the 9.4 million fragmented, segregated, exiled Palestinian bodies continues, this project is a manifestation of the multiple scales Palestinians embody — from the memory, to the object, to the space of the domestic, to the city. Palestine remains.’

Philip Gharios (DIP9) was awarded Diploma Honours for his project, ‘In the Name of Resilience’, a response to the crises suffered by the city of Beirut over the past year.

Philip commented that ‘Following a series of tragic events that have brought my fellow Lebanese citizens to their knees, I hope that this project can materialise and lead to the creation of pockets of light, spaces of hope throughout the city of Beirut. I hope it can help it recover and grow as a city of greater care and inclusivity, while encouraging its population to finally look forward to a tangible future that can bring tolerance and peace.’

‘'In the Name of Resilience' is an urban response to the different crises that are currently ravaging the city of Beirut. In a context where the population’s wellbeing is completely disregarded by the State, this project rethinks the nature of infrastructures of care by building a network decentralised interventions on small inconstructible parcels dispersed across the urban fabric. By providing care on a very local and human level it exposes the population to the possibility of an alternative Social Contract revolving around care for the citizen.

This project is in conversation with different actors of the dynamic civil society in Beirut. It brings different people, ideas, and resources together to propose a network of spaces catered for the civic, social, and humanitarian needs of the different neighbourhoods of Beirut. The proposed interventions explore design strategies to navigate through the ‘in-constructibility’ of the parcels. They vary in function and size while retaining a distinct architectural language that signals the presence of care through the city. By overlaying an environment of care over the built environment of Beirut, this project introduces a much-needed social safety net to the population while amplifying voices that need to be heard and increasing the right to the city.’

Shaha Raphael (DIP17) was awarded Diploma Honours for her project, which considers the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon:

‘I’ve found that the only thing that brings me peace is working with my hands,

Remaining in motion, not only to preserve, but to process.

You are at once reminiscing and looking forward.’

Kneading, digging, cutting, mixing, compressing, raking, the dough, the earth.

This project is a collective ground, accessible to all inhabitants, binding them through programme and materiality. Using geologically aware construction methods, the project suggests a hyperlocal approach to material providence by using a cut-fill operation in order to move and transform the earth on site, inhabiting the ground and making bricks and mixes to construct vaults and surface finishes. The technical thesis is about material consciousness, the balance between the excavated and the reused, the reduction of transportation of material, and its transformation.

It is an attempt at blurring the boundary between the urban and geological fabric, suggesting that the people might be able to rethink their place within the country at a time of turmoil by understanding their place in the landscape. Trying to reconnect the people of the area of the Bekaa through secular means, by identifying the fabric of the land itself as the unifying feature to be rediscovered. Instead of falling back on corrupted sectarian value-structures, we can focus on that which physically comprises the territory. Regaining understanding of local resources and construction processes may help remind people what they have in common.

Zaina Sweidan (DIP13) was also awarded Diploma Honours for her project, ‘The Invisible Core’, which examines the Kafala system in Jeddah Saudia.

‘This project works in conversation with a population that does exist under the Kafala System. It is an investigation into the implications of the Kafala system within the architecture and urban environment of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The Invisible Core takes form in a series of situated testimonies of four migrant individuals; spatialized through a collaborative process in a 3D model that facilitates the shifting of perspectives. It aims to study the thresholds and boundaries that have caused the inter-sectional struggles of domestic and undocumented workers within the city and to materialize the economic impact of large hidden contributor to the growth and maintenance of Saudi Arabia. The project works to speak alongside rather than speak about a population that has not been heard.’