The seminar will deal with the analysis and interpretation of architectural act as a representative of a specific identity or the very factor that creates identity. We shall discuss individual and collective identities, of social, cultural, religious and local nature. Among sources of identities, we shall study elements of belonging and the opposing idea of the other, either for comparison or as conflict. Architectural expressions will be examined both in their physical and programatic aspects, as location, plan, massing, materials, spaces, openings, details etc, and also in their cultural context, such as sources of inspiration, and hidden or open references to aesthetic or ideological aims. The case studies will be taken from the the Folk house and culture house architecture in Israel, since the end of the19th century.