Architecture Urban Space And War

This book investigates architectural and urban dimensions of the ethnic-nationalist conflict in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, during and after the siege of 1992–1995. Focusing on the wartime destruction of a portion of the cityscape in central Sarajevo and its post-war reconstruction, re-inscription and memorialization, the book reveals how such spatial transformations become complicit in the struggle for reconfiguration of the city’s territory, boundaries and place identity. Drawing on original research, the study highlights the capacities of architecture and urban space to mediate terror, violence and resistance, and to deal with heritage of the war and act a catalyst for ethnic segregation or reconciliation. Based on a multi-disciplinary methodological approach grounded in architectural and urban theory, the spatial turn in critical social theory and assemblage thinking, as well as techniques of spatial analysis, in particular morphological mapping, the book provides an innovative spatial framework for analyzing the political role of contemporary cities.

"For architecture and urban space to have relevance in the 21st Century, we cannot merely reignite the approaches of thought and design that were operative in the last century. This is despite of, or because of, the nexus between politics and space often being theorized as a representation or by-product of politics. As a symbol or an effect, the spatial dimension is depoliticized. Consequently architecture and the urban are halted from fostering any systematic change as they are secondary to the event, and therefore incapable of performing any political role. We can no longer afford to reduce space to a neutral backdrop of political realities. This project explores how architecture and urban space can unsettle the unquestioned construct of the spatial politics of governing. Considering both ongoing and unprecedented global problems - from violence and urban warfare, the refugee crisis, borderization, detention camps, terrorist attacks to capitalist urbanization, inequity, social unrest and climate change - this handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary research focussed on the complex nexus of politics, architecture and urban space. Volume I starts by pointing out the need to explore the politics of spatialization to make sense of the operational nature of spatial oppression in contemporary times. The operative and active political reading of space is disseminated through five thematics: Violence and War Machines; Security and Borders; Race, Identity and Ideology; Spectacle and the Screen; and, Mapping Landscapes and Big Data. This first volume of the handbook frame cutting-edge contemporary debates, and present studies of actual theories and projects that address spatial politics. This handbook provides comprehensive and multidisciplinary research focused on the complex nexus of politics, architecture and urban space"--

For architecture and urban space to have relevance in the 21st Century, we cannot merely reignite the approaches of thought and design that were operative in the last century. This is despite, or because of, the nexus between politics and space often being theorized as a representation or by-product of politics. As a symbol or an effect, the spatial dimension is depoliticized. Consequently, architecture and the urban are halted from fostering any systematic change as they are secondary to the event and therefore incapable of performing any political role. This handbook explores how architecture and urban space can unsettle the unquestioned construct of the spatial politics of governing. Considering both ongoing and unprecedented global problems – from violence and urban warfare, the refugee crisis, borderization, detention camps, terrorist attacks to capitalist urbanization, inequity, social unrest and climate change – this handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary research focused on the complex nexus of politics, architecture and urban space. Volume I starts by pointing out the need to explore the politics of spatialization to make sense of the operational nature of spatial oppression in contemporary times. The operative and active political reading of space is disseminated through five thematics: Violence and War Machines; Security and Borders; Race, Identity and Ideology; Spectacle and the Screen; and Mapping Landscapes and Big Data. This first volume of the handbook frames cutting-edge contemporary debates and presents studies of actual theories and projects that address spatial politics. This Handbook will be of interest to anyone seeking to meaningfully disrupt the reduction of space to an oppressive or neutral backdrop of political realities.

Ordnance: War + Architecture & Space investigates how strategies of warfare occupy and alter built and other landscapes. Ranging across the modern period from the eighteenth century to the present day, the book presents a series of case-studies which operate in and between a number of settings and scales, from the infrastructures of the battlefield to the logistics of the domestic realm. The book explores the patterns, forms and systems that articulate militarised spaces, excavates how these become re-circulated and reconfigured within other domains and discusses the often ephemeral legacies and residues of these architectures. The complexities of unpicking the spaces of the 'fog of war' are addressed by an inter-disciplinary approach which deploys graphic and textual analyses and techniques to provide new and unique perspectives on a hitherto underexplored aspect of architectural and spatial discourse: the tactics and programmes through which the built environment has historically been made to respond to the imperatives and threats of conflict and, in the context of the 'war on terror', continues to be so in ever more pervasive ways.

Based on empirical observations in Helsinki, Manchester and Berlin, this is a ground-breaking constructive critique of the concepts, underlying the practices of planning and architecture. With central notions of temporality, experiment and conflict, this book contextualizes Lefebvre's ideas on urban planning and architecture, but also allows insights to new theoretical work, including that of Finnish and Swedish authors. In doing so, it suggests and develops exciting new approaches and tools leading to 'experiential urbanism'.

This scholarly account of the various ways in which space is configured by power, and in which space becomes a resource for power, combines insights from social theory, politics, history and geography.

Modernity tends to be considered a mostly Western, chronologically recent concept. Looking at locations in Brazil, Java, India, Georgia, and Yugoslavia, among others, Across Space and Time provides architectural and cultural evidence that modernity has had an impact across the globe and for much longer than previously conceived. This volume moves through space and time to illustrate the way global modernity has been negotiated through architecture, urban planning, design pedagogies, preservation, and art history in diverse locations around the world. Bringing together emerging and established architecture and art history scholars, each chapter focuses on a particular site where modernity was defined, challenged, or reinterpreted. The contributors examine how architectures, landscapes, and design thinking influence and are influenced by conflicts between cultural, economic, technological, and political forces. By invoking well-researched histories to ground their work in a post-colonial critique, they closely examine many prevailing myths of modernity. Notable topics include emerging architectural history in the Indian subcontinent and the connection between climate change and architecture. Ultimately, Across Space and Time contributes to the ongoing critique of architecture and its history, both as a discipline and within the academy. The authors insist that architecture is more than a style. It is a powerful expression of representational power that reveals how a society negotiates its progress.

By investigating the sovereign claims of American power and the architectural spaces of secret prisons, Spaces of Disappearance reconstructs the network of black siteprisons developed in the early years of the so-called War on Terror. Jordan H. Carver compiles an original archive of architectural representations, redacted documents, and media reports to build a knowingly incomplete spatial history of post-9/11 extraordinary rendition. Framed by an introductory essay by architectural historian and theorist Felicity D. Scott that positions Carver's work withina longer history of military strategy andstate violence against "uncertain" warfare, this book skillfully presents the territorialand political logics of the top-secret CIA Detention and Interrogation Program. Spaces of Disappearance shows how architectures of con nement were designed to deny prisoners their human subjectivity and describes how the spectacle of government bureaucracyis used as a substitute for accountability.