Prof. Els Verbakel is a founding partner of Derman Verbakel Architecture and Head of the School of Architecture at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem. She was a faculty member at the Technion in Haifa, Columbia University, NYC, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and Princeton University, New Jersey. Els has earned her PhD in Architecture from Princeton University, a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University, and a Graduate Degree in Civil Engineering and Architecture from the University of Leuven, Belgium. She served as the editor of two books: “In Search of the Public. Notes on the Contemporary American City” and “Constellations: Constructing Urban Design Practices” as well as the Architectural Design (AD) Magazine on the theme “Cities of Dispersal.”

Michael Turner, born in the UK, is a practicing architect, professor, and UNESCO Chairholder in Urban Design and Conservation Studies.  He has been involved with urban and environmental issues in Israel since establishing the first Municipal Unit in 1974 in Jerusalem.

Turner has been involved with master plans for the Old City of Jerusalem and Bnei Berak and conservation designs for sites as Apollonia, Montfort and Shuni.  His recent European research activities include the management of pre-historic sites; the Divided Cities of Jerusalem and Berlin and a tri-national Partnership for Peace offering mechanisms for shared heritage and sustainable peace. Other projects have included Designing Safer Urban Spaces, managing the Bologna Protocol in Israel and currently part of a Marie-Curie doctoral consortium on Heritage. He was an initiator of the National Archive for Art, Architecture and Design and continues to be involved.

Serving on many international professional-academic bodies he has contributed many articles and presentations to academic fora and professional meetings all over the world. He chaired the Israel World Heritage Committee from its inception in 1999 till 2011, and with two decades of contribution to UNESCO, he was elected to the World Heritage Committee in 2005 and during 2007-2008 served as its vice-President.  He has accompanied the debate on Historic Urban Landscapes and is special advisor to the World Heritage Centre Director providing international assistance in the fields of urban design and conservation.

A registered architect who specializes in Historic Preservation. She is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Department of Architecture, in the Urban Design Master's Degree Program, and in the Department of Visual and Material Culture. Adi serves as Bezalel Project Coordinator for EDICULA - Educational Digital Innovative Cultural heritage related Learning Activities (Erasmus+ Project). Adi received her B.Arch from the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. She holds a Diploma in Conservation of the Built Heritage from the Faculty of Arts, Tel Aviv University and Master of Art in Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies from Rutgers University, N.J. Currently she is a PhD candidate at Sapienza University of Rome. She received the Bezalel Commendation for excellence in teaching (2021-22) She specializes in urban heritage, the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach, ethics in conservation, documentation, evaluation, and conservation consultation. She is the conservation consultant for the Reginal Planning Unit at the Israel Planning Administration, the Southern Region Planning Committee, and for Holon Municipality. She was the Conservation Policy Coordinator for the Israel Antiquities Authority. Adi is the Chairperson of the Cultural Routes Scientific Committee, ICOMOS Israel, a voluntarily position.

עברית

Image

Prof. Senan Abdelqader is a practicing architect and urban planner, founder and owner of Senan Architects (SA), which he established in 1995 in Herzeliya, in Jerusalem in 2004, and in 2014 in Tel Aviv-Jaffa.
Through working on numerous private projects and other public ones, that try to influence and are influenced by social and political variables, Senan has created a public platform where the process of planning is considered to be a collective act and a space for civil practices.
During his practice in SA, Senan started teaching at Tel-Aviv University in 1998; he then founded the “in-formal” research unit in Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 2006, giving the possibility to architecture students to critically experiment a space where formality and informality are tangled
Senan has participated in various local and international architectural Biennales and exhibitions, among which, the São Paulo Biennale in Brazil in 2007 where he published his book “Architecture of (in)Dependency”, in which he introduces the possibility of transforming the rural life that the Palestinians live, into a contemporary urban life. 
In 2018 he established the Institute for the Study of Arab Culture in Visual Arts, Design and Architecture at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. 

Image