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May 19^th 2026. 6PM

Auditorium, Vodere Zollamtsstrasse 7, Vienna

To attend online register at studio.​space.​popular@​uni-​ak.​ac.​at

This lecture offers a critical analysis of cement-based concrete in the Palestinian territories from an urban and political ecology perspective. It examines cement as a multi-scalar network entangled with power relations, territorial conflict, land acquisition, exclusion, political desires, and the limits of urban metabolism. As a substance, it plays an active role in urbanisation and construction projects in the West Bank. Control over its circulation consolidated the power over urban metabolism. Establishing independent cement plants requires sovereignty over land and energy resources. And finally, the destruction of Gaza shows us that this material’s agency is no longer seen as a banal modern construction material but rather as an activated weapon for urban annihilation.

Studio Space Popular in collaboration with Österreichische Gesellschaft für Architektur. Moderated by Anousheh Kehar / Studio SPoP, Nina Kolowratnik /ÖGFA

Samir Harb is a human geographer and trained architect whose work examines the material politics of urbanisation, infrastructure, and the environment, with a focus on cement and its production networks. He completed his PhD at the University of Manchester on how cement shapes urban and territorial transformations in Palestine, linking production to questions of sovereignty and political autonomy. As a postdoctoral researcher in Berlin, he extended this research to European cement industries, net-zero CO₂ agendas, and the political ecology of decarbonisation. Harb is also an artist whose graphic novels and mappings visualise complex spatial and political processes internationally.

Image description:

Samir Harb, February 2025. 

Al-Asr العصر

The meaning of Asr:

Meanings of ʿaṣr (عَصْر)
1. Core root meaning: To squeeze / press / extract
• Pressing juice from fruit (e.g., grapes, olives الزيتون)
• Extracting something valuable through pressure
2. Time / age / era
• A period or epoch in history
• Example: ʿaṣr jadīd (عَصْرٌ جَدِيدٌ) = modern era
3. Late afternoon
• The time before sunset
• Also refers to the daily ʿAṣr (العَصْر) prayer time
4. Pressure / constraint
• Something being tightened or compressed
• Life being ​“pressed” by time or hardship
5. Hardship / distress (indirect / figurative usage)
• Derived from the idea that pressure → difficulty
• Found more in literary or poetic Arabic
6. Rain cloud / rain (classical usage)
• In some classical contexts, relates to clouds heavy with rain, as if ​“pressed”
7. Juice / extract (noun forms)
• What comes out after squeezing (e.g., juice from fruit)