Amid Gaza’s devastation, architect Mohammed Abu Jarad has found a way to resist despair, by sketching life back into the ruins. Where buildings have been reduced to dust and entire neighbourhoods erased, his pen and laptop become tools of defiance, turning rubble into maps of future homes. For Abu Jarad, design is not just a profession but an act of survival, a reminder that Gaza’s spirit cannot be buried beneath the wreckage.

Before the war, he built houses that reflected his identity and love for his homeland. Offers to emigrate have not swayed him; his attachment to Gaza, he insists, is worth more than safety abroad. When bombardments silenced construction, he began redrawing destroyed houses from photographs, often at the request of families who had lost everything. Each design, shared freely, became a small promise that rebuilding remains possible, even if only on paper for now.

The destruction is vast: hundreds of thousands of homes obliterated, countless families displaced. Abu Jarad’s designs tell the stories behind these statistics, like a villa in Rafah destroyed before its owner could step inside, or a family house in Beit Hanoun that survived only three months before being torched and then bombed to the ground. His own unfinished home was reduced to rubble, yet he continues to draw, choosing hope over despair.

Critics once dismissed his work as misplaced, but for many in Gaza his sketches have become symbols of endurance. Each line he draws is a declaration that homes, lives, and dreams can be rebuilt. In a land scarred by loss, Abu Jarad’s quiet rebellion is to imagine a future where Gaza rises again, house by house.