RIWAQ- Centre for Architectural Conservation

RIWAQ, Centre for Architectural Conservation, based in Ramallah, was founded in 1991 by a group of architects and activists working to save historic buildings in Palestine. Its mission is to protect, restore and rehabilitate Palestine's architectural and cultural heritage through three programs: Restoration, Regeneration of the 50 Most Significant Historic Centres, and Community and Cultural Programming, alongside a Research and Publications Program that maintains the national Registry of Historic Buildings and supports policy work on the legal environment for heritage protection. Main activities: RIWAQ has registered over 50,000 historic buildings across 422 villages, towns and cities in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. Its 50 Village Project has rehabilitated 22 historic centres, improving public and private space, services and living conditions in villages across Palestine, and it has restored over 160 individual buildings for reuse as premises for community-based associations. Since 2017, RIWAQ has run The Life Jacket: The Revitalisation and Rehabilitation of Rural Jerusalem, an award winning initiative working with villages northwest of Jerusalem, including Qalandiya, on community-led heritage rehabilitation. Through nearly a decade of this work, RIWAQ has built trust-based relationships with local councils, community groups, artists and farmers, and has developed a track record of integrating heritage rehabilitation with broader social, economic and environmental concerns, including agricultural knowledge and land use, as they come up within these communities.