abeer seikaly explores how bedouin weaving can shape shelter for displaced communities

desert traditions translate to speculative shelters

In many parts of the world, architecture begins from conditions that are already under strain. Displacement stretches across years. Climate reshapes land and movement. Systems that support living remain uneven or absent. Within this context, utopia shifts away from distant projections and moves into how spaces are created, shared, and sustained over time.

Jordanian-Palestinian designer Abeer Seikaly works from this position. Her practice centers on traditional textiles and material systems that respond to instability while drawing from long-standing knowledge embedded in craft. Rather than isolating design from its context, she builds through it to treat architecture as a process that evolves with people and use.

Abeer Seikaly, image courtesy the artist

abeer seikaly learns from communities’ hands

Across her work, Abeer Seikaly returns to the Bedouin tent, or Beit Al Sha’ar, as a source of structural and cultural knowledge. The tent carries a history shaped through collective making, where women have traditionally led its construction through weaving. This knowledge has often been excluded from formal design discourse, despite its technical and spatial sophistication.

The designer brings this lineage forward through projects that translate weaving into structural systems. The emphasis stays on how materials are handled, how connections are formed, and how knowledge is shared. Architecture here develops through interaction between designer and community, with making understood as a form of continuity.

Weaving a Home, 2020 – ongoing, visualization courtesy the artist

weaving a home

In Weaving a Home (2020–ongoing), Abeer Seikaly applies these ideas to the question of shelter for displaced communities. The project responds to the reality that temporary housing often extends across years, while remaining limited in both infrastructure and social capacity. Her approach reconsiders what a shelter can provide over time.

The design takes the form of a collapsible dome composed of a double-layered structural fabric. Within this system, water, energy, and environmental regulation are integrated into the architecture itself. The structure can be transported, expanded, and grouped with others to form larger settlements. Each unit supports living while contributing to a broader network that can grow and adapt. See designboom’s coverage of an early iteration here.

Weaving a Home, 2020, Tent at Al-Namara overlooking the Dead Sea, Jordan, visualization © Abeer Seikaly, 2020

terroir

Terroir (2022–ongoing) builds on this foundation through a traveling cultural space developed by Abeer Seikaly together with artisans in the Jordanian desert. Handwoven strips of wool interlace with wooden rods, forming a three-dimensional enclosure that can be assembled, disassembled, and transported. The structure carries the qualities of the materials and the place they come from.

The work draws directly from the Bedouin ground loom, where weaving has long served as both production and social practice. Within the installation, visitors encounter a space shaped by this process. The interior supports gathering and conversation, recalling the majlis within traditional tents. As it moves between locations, the structure adapts, allowing new exchanges to take place while maintaining its connection to its origins.

Terroir, 2022, installed for MANE in Dubai, image by Rami Mansour © Abeer Seikaly

Terroir (detail), 2022, image by Rami Mansour © Abeer Seikaly

meeting points

In Meeting Points (2019), Abeer Seikaly’s approach takes form through a reconfigurable system of wood and fiber. Interlaced elements create a self-supporting lattice that can shift in scale and configuration. The structure is shaped through tension, with each connection contributing to its stability.

The project extends beyond its physical form. It proposes architecture as a collective act, where the system evolves through participation. The reference to weaving is present in both technique and process, linking contemporary fabrication with traditions developed over generations. The structure becomes a space for gathering, learning, and exchange, where its meaning grows through use.

living within systems that adapt

Across these projects, the experience of space is shaped by material and structure. Light filters through woven surfaces. Air moves through adjustable openings. The geometry of the enclosure allows for flexible use, with interiors defined through occupation rather than fixed boundaries.

This approach changes how architecture is understood. Space is neither static nor complete. It develops through interaction, responding to environmental conditions and social use. Materials carry both technical and cultural meaning to link present conditions with inherited knowledge.

Meeting Points (detail), 2019, the pre-stressed panels form hexagonal unit cells, photography: © Abeer Seikaly

utopia as a way of working

In Seikaly’s practice, utopia is carried through method. It appears in systems that support continuity under pressure, where architecture engages directly with the conditions it serves. Each project explores how material, structure, and community can work together to sustain living environments that evolve over time.

By drawing from collective knowledge and translating it into adaptable systems, Abeer Seikaly proposes a direction for architecture that remains open to change. The work suggests a future shaped through participation, where building becomes a shared process that supports both place and people.

Weaving a Home (process), 2020, image © Tanya Marar

Meeting Points (process), 2019, image © Tanya Marar

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Terroir (process), 2022, a Bedouin woman weaving on the ground loom, with her daughter watching beside her -- the social epicenter of the community, image © Abeer Seikaly

Weaving a Home, 2020, the quarter-scale prototype at Espacio Fundación Telefónica in Madrid is exhibited as part of 'Radical curiosity: In the Orbit of Buckminster Fuller' curated by Rosa Pera and José Luis de Vicente

Weaving a Home, 2020, pre-stressed radial frames are linked circumferentially with the patterned geometrical membrane to form a stable and durable double membrane enclosure, image © Tanya Marar

Meeting Points (process), 2019, image courtesy the artist

Meeting Points, 2019, women processing goat hair into yarn, image © Abeer Seikaly

Terroir (process), 2022, the twisted structural fabric strip, image © image Abeer Seikaly

project info:

designer: Abeer Seikaly