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Saja Amro (1993) is an architect, a designer and educator whose practice is socially engaged. Over
the past five years, she has examined the relationship between spatial design and education. How
does the layout of a classroom influence the way we learn? And what does a classroom’s design
reveal about pedagogy and power? In her practice, Amro explores these questions together with her
students. Amro challenges in what she identifies as the standardized Western model of education, in
which the teacher is positioned as the sole holder of knowledge and students as empty vessels to be filled. This model is embedded in the physical organization of the classroom: the teacher at the front, students seated in rows behind. Drawing on their own experiences, backgrounds and creativity,
Amro’s students develop alternatives to these kinds of standardized and hierarchical models.
The installation Amro present at Prospects emerges from a personal perspective. She grew up in
Palestine and attended a school run by UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees,
whose schools are found throughout the West Bank. For Amro, UNRWA schools exemplify
standardized education. Not only do they adhere to the classical Western model; the schools and
classrooms themselves are also uniform in appearance. Based on an image Amro took in March 2025
of her former primary school in Palestine, she reproduced the signs hanging at the school gate. They
reference the protest against the annual defence fair that also take place at Ahoy.
Text: Sarah van Binsbergen