Library Circles is a series at the Jameel Library (Jameel Arts Centre) that highlights research-based and experimental practices by UAE-based artists, designers, and academics. In this iteration, Palestinian architect and academic Samar Halloum presents a research installation exploring everyday life and spatial practices within refugee camps. The showcase will be open to the public until 30 June 2025.
Focusing on Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Palestine, Halloum’s project reveals how displaced communities creatively adapt their built environments. Her research draws on fieldwork, oral histories, and interviews to document how residents transplant communal traditions from their original villages into makeshift spaces, transforming them into enduring, socially meaningful environments. One key insight is how informal planning strategies, such as the adaptation of Musha’ landholding customs, challenge imposed urban systems and preserve a sense of cultural continuity.
This exhibition invites viewers to rethink refugee camps not as temporary or static settlements but as active, evolving spaces shaped by memory, resilience, and community agency. It weaves together rigorous architectural inquiry with deeply human narratives.
About Samar Halloum
Halloum obtained a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Sharjah (AUS) in 2014 and a Master of Architecture from Yale University (USA) in 2022. Her professional experience includes working with X-Architects and the Sharjah Investment Authority. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor at the American University of Sharjah.
Among Halloum’s accolades is Yale’s William Wirt Winchester Travel Fellowship. In 2023, she was Design & Research Lead at the UAE National Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (Italy).
About Jameel Arts Centre
Located on Dubai Creek’s Jaddaf Waterfront, Jameel Arts Centre is a non-profit contemporary art institution established by Art Jameel in 2018. Designed by Serie Architects, the 10,000 sqm building features a series of minimalist, cubic volumes linked by open walkways, drawing inspiration from traditional sha’abi architecture.
The Centre houses three floors of exhibition galleries, a rooftop terrace, event spaces, a restaurant, a shop, and the Jameel Library, an open-access research space. One of its signature features is a set of seven desert-themed courtyards, designed by landscape architect Anouk Vogel, which showcase 30+ species of rare and sculptural plants representing different desert biomes. The Centre also anchors the adjacent Jaddaf Waterfront Sculpture Park.
Serving as a dynamic hub for the Emirates and the wider region, Jameel Arts Centre fosters artwork and research rooted in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, while welcoming visitors through exhibitions, workshops, talks, and commissions.
To learn more about this year’s edition of Library Circles, please visit the official web page of the exhibition.
You might also be interested in viewing Samur by Zheng Bo and Formation III: The Dappled Light of the Sun, a sculpture by Conrad Shawcross. We also recommend that you explore Playscape: I Dreamt of a City Everyone Calls Home, an interactive playground.
