Jordanian student’s initiative offers a face-lift to abandoned heritage buildings in Salt

AMMAN — Ahmad Jubran, an architect and PhD candidate at Waseda University in Tokyo, recently launched a community initiative to clean-up and document abandoned heritage buildings in the city of Salt. 

The volunteer-based initiative is called “Al Salt lina w hagekalena”, which roughly translates to “Salt is ours and we owe this to it”. 

The project aims to foster a positive relationship between tangible heritage sites and their host communities through awareness-raising and clean-up campaigns, according to Jubran, whose postgraduate studies focus on the city of Salt. 

The field visits necessary for his research project led Jubran to discover that the poor condition of some of the city’s heritage buildings requires immediate action to ensure their preservation. 

“It was very unfortunate and saddening realising that we were at risk of losing such beautiful buildings and architectural treasures due to neglect. I felt the need to do something in order to prevent that,” he told The Jordan Times. 

Jubran then reached out to Maisa Alshomali, the Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at  Al Balqa Applied University, who teaches a subject called “Heritage Conservation” to architecture students. 

“I suggested getting these students to clean up and document an old building in Salt as a way of enriching their learning experience and fostering social responsibility,” he said. 

The initiative’s first clean-up campaign in January, 2023 targeted Said Al Bahra School, which first opened in the 1950s. According to Jubran, it was formerly a residential building from the 1900s, distinguished by its liwans, vaults and open courtyard. 

He noted that the building, located on a tourist trail, “holds great architectural value and bears witness to the city’s past academic life”.

“It’s one of its oldest schools; while we were working, people in their seventies and eighties stopped by and shared their childhood memories in it,” he added. 

“Fikra”, a youth-lead initiative focused on documenting Jordan’s urban and architectural heritage, helped recruit volunteers, while the Greater Salt Municipality provided the initiative with the necessary equipment, as well as workers and trucks, to remove any collected junk and trash, he continued. 

Thirty volunteers, including architects, university students and professors, school students and neighbours, completed the task in roughly three hours, according to Jubran. 

“The sustainability of our tangible heritage requires local communities’ awareness of its significance and their responsibility towards it,” he said, expressing hope that this initiative expands to other cities and governorates across the Kingdom.