This dissertation is an architectural history of West Bank settlements. Since 1967, when it captured the West Bank from Jordan in the Six-Day War, Israel has overseen the construction of hundreds of settlements. Though they began as an esoteric project, mainly associated with a small group of messianic Israelis, today, settlements house more than 430,000 Jewish Israelis. Built outside the recognized borders of Israel and against the opposition of the native Palestinian population, settlements have become one of the most contested housing projects in Israel and the world.

Scholars of the built environment have often theorized West Bank settlements as a paradigmatic case of the militarization of architecture. Analyzing aerial views and statements made by individual politicians, they have argued that settlements function as war machinery. That argument is coupled by an assumption that settlements are of uniform design. As a result, existing scholarship has overlooked the fact that a heterogeneous landscape of settlement types and housing models—ranging from trailer homes and kibbutz houses, to suburban tract homes and multistoried apartment buildings—has come to form the settler movement over the last five decades. This heterogeneity defies easy categorizations and demands reconsideration of the political uses of architecture in the region.

Architecture on the Ground studies the intricate design debates that accompanied the construction of settlements. It shifts the focus away from high-profile individuals to explore how architects, amateur archeologists, real estate developers, and disparate groups of settlers, ranging from religious Zionists to bohemian artists and ultra-Orthodox wives, played a pivotal role in the design and construction of settlements. It identifies five successive settlement patterns that have emerged over the fifty years Israel has occupied the West Bank. Each pattern emerged in response to different political moments, and is defined by characteristic building technologies, architectural forms, and practices of governance. In tracing the evolution of these five patterns, the dissertation seeks to model a new understanding of the relationship between architecture and politics—one founded on numerous contingencies and contradictions.