Edited by Ifat Finkelman, Deborah Pinto Fdeda, Oren Sagiv and Tania Coen Uzzielli

In the geopolitical context of the Holy Land, the combination of historical events, myths, and traditions has created an extraordinary concentration of holy places. Because of their supreme religious importance, many of these places have become arenas of bitter struggle between competing groups of religions and communities. The Israeli Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale focuses on this complex, fragile system of coexistence between rivals that has been established in the 19th Century: the Status Quo. The comprehensive publication opens a contemporary discussion of the topic, focusing on five major holy sites that encapsulate the spatio-political phenomenon of the Status Quo. Illustrated with architectural plans, archive documentation, images of the sites and works by visual artists, critical essays from various disciplines investigate the role of architecture and how these agreements have regulated and transformed space.