Children’s Museum, Bethlehem

A University of East London Travel Scholarship in 2015 provided the opportunity to work with Palestinian practice ShamsArd Studios in Ramallah, contributing to design studies for a proposed children’s museum on a historic site in Bethlehem.

The work explored how a contemporary cultural and educational programme could be introduced while respecting the character and materials of the existing site, combining heritage preservation, adaptive reuse, landscape and public realm design.

Site visits and surveys informed hand-drawn studies of circulation, play, landscape and the relationship between ruins and new interventions. Rather than treating the historic fabric as an isolated artefact, the proposals made it part of the museum experience, with pathways, play spaces and gathering places woven around the existing structures.