This was a paper I wrote as prior study, which I believe will be extreamly helpful in the comming months.
The War of Architecture.
Words create complex patterns of a language; the ties between countries have been dependent on this verbal communication for centuries. Letters of agreement, actions of peace; handshakes; these are what allows for a civilization to progress. When these simple patterns are disturbed and broken we begin with an argument, leading to perhaps non-settlement, a full disagreement, hatred ensues, leading to war.
Where is it? Where can we go to see this evolution in a still frame process, forever written on the grounds and walls of history? Our Declarative memory, this specific type of memory considered episodic. Meaning that not only do we remember content of events, but where they took place. “Stress is the driving motor for the episodic memory.”
[1] Internally, the hippocampus is responsible for the fight or flight reaction during times of stress. The hippocampus is also the activator of the amygdala, which is the trigger for fear and panic and for learning during highly emotional trauma.
These are proven facts that we as humans relate trauma to places and locations that are site specific on a very personal plane. These places are generally associated with architecture in some form or another. We can all recall the day of 9/11. It is a timeless image that has been burned into the brains of everyone across the globe. And the locations where we found out about 9/11 have been ingrained into our memory just the same.
“There are ‘exit architectures’ which take up position directly behind ex-architectures’. Escape routes and emergency exits are in fact anti-stress architectures which constantly remind us of the worst case, thus demolishing any thoughts of a safe and secure interior.”
[2] Simply stated, the population is scared. We are not able to find safety even in the most casual and comfortable of days. Architecture not only consists of the façade and the interior, but holds within the methodology of “hodos” or “the way.” Conceived of by Kurt Lewin, during the First World War, he suggested that “the front is the starting point of the most emotionally saturated of all routes.”
[3] On the way home, the level of stress declines and then with it, the architecture changes, perhaps to a triumphal arch from a bombed out shelter of a city.
The pathway of architecture does not only include the simple walls and floors of a building, but the ground really means. What it stands for to the people using the space. Compare a mosque and a church. They are both sacred grounds to both religions, but hugely different in the eyes and the souls of the inhabitants. These are the falsifications that imply safety to the world. While many take refuge in their God, the architecture of these sites, i.e. the Great Mosque in Baghdad and St. Peters in Rome, still remains quite simply the same, and generally quite beautifully different.
Religion is just a substructure, an excuse to build. What becomes more of a reality is the actual necessity to facilitate the religious practices. We have to look at the reasons why architecture must accommodate and be planned in such a way that allows for the tremendous problems we as a people have to face with other. Problems such as overcrowding and over population of cities. This density and concentration of people arise many questions concerning to the well being of the masses and in today’s “small world” it brings the issue of safety and security directly to our doorsteps.
The past tells us to build bomb shelters, much like the bombing of London in 1915. A necessity of survival during such dark times. What would our city become if all of our town houses and brownstones are able to withstand a blast from a grenade or a suicide bomber? Should we build cities enveloped by protective gates and walls, a machine gunner at every outpost? A terrifying thought to say the least. Then what can be done to ease the strain and calm the masses into living a life we all deserve?
It is not just “war” anymore. The battle exists in our memory and in the way we have to change in order to compensate the shifting and ever increasing dangers of our shrinking world. From the battle fields of Iraq to the trampled and crushed victims of the religious ceremony to the door steps of the friendly neighbor who borrows a cup of coffee. We need smart architecture that belongs not only to the people, but for the people, and that it will help in ways that today’s architecture falls short of.
War time architecture has a basic set of rules. It must be sturdy and strong enough to endure the most vicious and devastating of attacks. It has to function in very specific ways i.e. the job the inhabitants are performing, and it has to be as hidden from the enemy as possible. The strongest points of this architecture include the functionality of the structure, and the durability of the structure. We have to understand the patterns of people and how one exists within these spaces.
Generally, the quarters are very small and leave little room for personal space. Natural lighting is not of abundance and if not connected with a main supply line. The bunkers or outposts are very secluded from the rest of force. When comparing this type of structure to the general city landscape, it’s hard to imagine that it is very different from say East Berlin during the early 1900’s. The Mietskaserne type housing reflects many aspects of the type of housing discussed above.
With material qualities left aside, architecture is just a shell, a product out of necessity to serve a definitive function; to be sheltered from the environment and to separate ourselves from one another. What happens when the option of being separated from one another is taken away and the only path of movement is swarmed with mass hysteria? We should be able to rely on the infrastructure to separate the crowed even by strategically placed architectonic movements that not only disperses the crowed, but its architecture is meaningful and beautiful at the same time.
We can look at for example the First Jamarat Bridge near Mecca, constructed in 1975 and demolished in 2006. In 1994, 226 people died while attempting to throw pebbles at three pillars that symbolized the devil and other religious figures. The first bridge was torn down after many more deaths in 2006, and the new replacement bridge is expected, by 2015 to be able to move six million people across per day. That is an amazing feat of design and innovation, based off a necessity.
Necessity is an extremely important word when discussing architecture, and combining the discussion with the topic of “war”. I believe that war and architecture are at war with themselves, while at the same time it could be viewed that war on a country and its architecture is like a forest fire and its trees. Burning down the old growth and renewing the land for change. Out of necessity does the architecture change. It evolves from a house to a bomb shelter with a few more feet of concrete. A tube station in London becomes an underground evacuation and shelter route. These adaptations of architecture are what the new architecture can be.
Brilliantly old and trustworthy, the architecture of today and the past, but until new social, economical and political dilemmas arise will architecture ever really change. Architecture is the most obvious of the manmade forms that have to adapt to the uses we need it to be. Meaning that we wouldn’t try to build an igloo in the Moab desert for obvious reasons; and we wouldn’t run to a tent made of nylon when bombs are falling but we could use a tent to gather water when we are thirsty and we could build an igloo in Moab desert, if we wanted to drink it. Either situation is that we as people would use the architecture in ways that we NEED it to be. War is the most extreme case that places the stress of necessity to the limits.
In Germany, according to the U.S. strategic bombing survey on “Public Air Raid Shelters” in Germany” stated that “by the end of the war, the amount of bunkers in Germany could hold 15 per cent of a population in all principal towns and cities. By overcrowding these bunkers, they could hold up to 75 per cent of the population.”
[4] This fact is an incredible outlook on the Germans war strategies. Its policy of all out attack was clear across the board. They were very understanding that the importance of the standardization of forms and how the flak house was going to be a huge impact on the landscape of Germany. The Flak Houses differed from the “anthill” a bomb-deflecting arrow head shaped bomb shelter that grew to 27.8 meters in height. The roof design was first seen in France on the western front. The design, while monolithic and extremely aggressive served is purpose quite well. The bombs dropped would deflect down the side and away from the mass of the structure, thus using its shape, not just the concrete as a shield.
We see this in other examples as well, even in much early time periods. The Military architecture of the middle ages designed their walls around a city to maximize the channeling of the attacking enemy. There for giving the defendant a better chance to rebuttal with his weapon of choice. All of the structures serve a specific purpose. And what lays in-between of the design of purpose and the designs that become used out of necessity begins to show us what smart design is.
It is the meeting of two design problems. The intuitive naturalist functions of survival and the intuitive assumption of how to survive. When people ran to a church for cover during the events of 9/11, was it because they were simply seeking shelter from attack? Or was it only people who entered the church; believers that safety lied in the arms of God? Which either the answer, survival was on the minds all participants.
During the Iraq war0f 2003 the only shelter that existed for survival on occasion was the sand. A fox hole dug four feet into the earth with a grenade sump and a parapet to catch incoming rounds. Luckily for many of us, never had to be used as actual protection, generally used for sleeping and keeping out of sand storms. The architecture of Baghdad was neither beautiful nor, prepared for the invasion of an attack force. It was simply a city in the desert. An intriguing place where the landscape was as deceiving and dangerous as the enemy that was within. To the troops that were there, the architecture became the locations of pin point. The areas of the grid, and the security we needed to survive. Not only was the police station deserted, but within the facility was a torture chamber used for interrogation by Saddams regime. It seems to be the most disturbing of all duel purpose facilities I have come across personally. With a daily reminder from the Iraqi citizens who would lift their shirts to reveal a scar from Saddam along with a story in broken English of how their families were taken and murdered. Children and wives.
The broken, ghost like bunkers of Germany seem to hold the same tales. The same haunted past that within the walls of architecture, blood stain are not easily removed. We must find the smart design of safety. Not just from bombes, not just from corrupt leadership. But we need to find it from ourselves. If there is a way to disconnect ourselves from a type of architecture and allowed the necessity to design, then I believe we would be able to live in a safer and more productive world.
The necessity of design for the necessity of survival. This has been the impetus of human nature from the beginning of time. Making tools to help better our existence and to make life on a daily basis just a bit easier. When these tools are in the wrong hands we have no choice but to become smarter, no choice but to evolve from the coming flames of the forest fire. The relationship with military architecture and civilian architecture has already crossed paths. From Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion house to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy space center and to army radar stations that became the basis for off shore oil drilling, the structures were created with survival in mind, one way or another. Brutalism architecture holds the same idea of bunker architecture. Think walls of concrete, large powerful forms that speak though they are holding the most important information inside. And they are. The inhabitant.
The person is the reason for design; the people are who we as architects try to design for. Or we should be striving for such an honor.
It’s the memory of such disasters that we must remember and the ability to watch the people and reactions during such times. Architecture has to evolve, it must adapt to the chaos that our world is. On the faces of all our buildings lies the memory, the story of past nightmares and daydreams.
“Prior to the 2003 war on Iraq, the UN Security council press conference were held in front of the backdrop of a tapestry reproduction of Picasso’s Guernica hanging in the UN building in New York. When US Secretary of State Colin Powell made his case for war in February 2003, however, the horror of Guernica was literally, and metaphorically, covered up. “
[5]Let us not be blinded by the facades, but more aware of the internal movement of life. Our future depends on our ability to change after the flames of all our wild fires, burn through all our safe houses.
Bibliograpgy.
Anderson, Jon Lee
The Fall of Baghdad; New York Penguin Press. 2004
Bevan, Robert.
The Destuction of Memory: Architecture at War
London: Recktion; 2006.
risd main hm554.b84 2006
Dogan, Kuban
Muslim Religions and Architecture
Leiden: EJ Brill
1974-1985
2v ill,
Ladd, Brian.
The Ghosts of Berlin, confronting German histoty in the urban landscape.
Chicago University Press 1997
HT169. G32 B4127 1997
Makrya, Kanan
The Movement: Art veulgarity and responsibility in Iraq.
Sair al- Khalil
na9380 B34 K34 1991
Mallory, Keith
The Architecture of War
New York: panthoeon books.
risd main, NA 490. m3 1973
Naja and Vvien
Hanging cemetary of Baghdad
Springer press 2007
NA 977.n26 A4 2007
Oliver, Roy
The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East; translated from french by Rod Schwartz.
New York, Columbia University Press, 1949
Truby, Stephan
Exit-Architecture: Design between war and piece.
wein; New York: springer 2008
risd main NA 2543.S6.T75; 2008
The Shite Revival: How conflicts within Islam will shape the future.
ATH main 297.b N18665
[1]Stephan Truby. Exit Architecture, Design between war and peace. Pringer-Verlag/ Vienna, Austria
Springer Wien New York. 2008
[2] S.T.
[3] S.T.
[4] Steven Mallory, Avid Ottar, the Architecture of War. Pantheon Books, Random House, New York. 1973
[5] Robert Bevan. The Destruction of Memory, Architecture at War. Reaktion Books Ltd.
London. 2006
