Each stainless steel letter of wonder cabinet spins above the main facade as weather vanes.
Elias & Yousef Anastas, co-founders of Wonder Cabinet, Radio alHara, and the design company Local Industries will join us online from Beirut and walk us through a piece of community infrastructure that simultaneously makes space for resistance and, facing an Israeli settlement that used to be a forest twenty-something years ago, resists through ist pure presence.
Elias and Yousef Anastas are partners at AAU Anastas and co-founders of Local Industries, Radio AlHara, and Wonder Cabinet. Their work—at the intersection of architecture, design, and cultural production—is rooted in the idea of global provincialism: a dialogue between hyper-specific contexts and broader networks of knowledge, craftsmanship, and solidarity. Through AAU Anastas, they explore the potential of architecture when grounded in material intelligence, ranging from object design to territorial projects. They have a particular interest in stone construction, seeking to renew its use to imagine low-carbon structures, more resilient cities, and more responsible quarrying practices. With Local Industries, they collaborate with artisans to bridge traditional craftsmanship with contemporary production, affirming the importance of craft in today’s design landscape.
In 2020, they co-founded Radio AlHara, an online radio station that goes beyond simple sound broadcasting to create unexpected networks of solidarity—blending resistance, sharing, and experimentation. More recently, they launched Wonder Cabinet, a space dedicated to cultural production in Bethlehem. Conceived as a place for encounters and exchange, it brings together artists, designers, and artisans in collaborations that blend technique and creativity. At every scale, their work aims to weave connections between the local and the global, transforming the specificities of a place into a collective strength.