Connecting Stations Studio

Whether shaping images, objects, buildings, or cities, we, designers, are bound by a shared gift and a mutual duty. Design grants us a unique ability: to perceive the deep relationships between people and their environments, and between people through their environments. The more we commit to this perspective, the more we see human connections - ones that reach across political borders and cultural divisions, even when obscured by conflict.

Design is not neutral. Like the physician’s Hippocratic oath to treat anyone injured or sick, we believe designers hold an inherent responsibility to use their abilities to dream and realize dreams to support the well-being of all communities in need.

On the war in Gaza, we demand, we plead:

– Return all hostages. End the war.
– Restore dignified living conditions for all civilians.
– Ensure safety for every community in the region.

As for the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we believe:
There must be two states for two peoples, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side, in peace, cooperation, and shared prosperity.

As designers, we understand this:
Perception shapes how people relate to space, and space, in turn, shapes perception. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict today is not solely about land, religion or culture. Beneath the surface lies a deeper rupture that forges and is forged by struggle: a crisis of empathy and a collapse of communication.

Only when enough individuals can see through each other’s eyes, to communicate without fear, and to care across differences, then a political and territorial arrangement can be grown and sustained.

Design should be practiced as care!

We must urgently design to rebuild destroyed spaces for living - but just as urgently, we must design to build spaces for feeling. We should use design to build the capacity for empathy.

We need to create places that build connections, where Palestinians and Israelis, as well as other contested communities and nations, can:

Experience each other’s lives – and recognize the human behind the “other.”
Encounter each other safely – to see shared fears, griefs, and dreams.
Practice acts of care – to begin forging bonds that surpass ethnic and religious differences.

We should initiate opportunities to practice empathy at the very heart of the conflict – in spaces where division runs deepest. Between contested communities across Israel and Palestine – east and west of the Green Line; in mixed cities like Jerusalem; and in Gaza, once the war ends, basic living conditions are restored and people can begin to look beyond daily survival – together with nearby Israeli towns and villages still reeling from the trauma of October 7th.

We must also reach Palestinians and Israelis living in local homogeneous cities, or as immigrants abroad, whose daily lives offer few opportunities to meet, or even learn about, the other.

And we must make use of emotionally and physically safe spaces far from the conflict region, inviting individuals and groups into unfamiliar ground, where new perspectives can arise, unburdened by proximity, fear, and inherited history.

We call for 1,000 Connecting Stations – experiential spaces, educational spaces, immersive installations, workshops, shared rituals, and every tool at our disposal to train for empathy, to rehearse for peace. We commit to design and build as many stations as we can.

Israeli, Palestinian and global designers – let’s work together! Start your own station. Join another’s. Bring others in.

Educators, community leaders, curators – collaborate with us! Infuse your work with design-led spaces of encounter, care, and connection.