Architecture and Violence

In today’s turbulent times few subjects deserve a closer scrutiny tan the interactions between violence and constructed environment. Modernity’s contradictory histories laid bare the fact that it is impossible to consider architecture simply a benign, passive victim of humanity’s violent vices. Built space is as capable of incarnating violent acts as enacting them, disciplining and silencing the subject in the process.

Architecture & Violence
In this compelling volume, some of the most incisive thinkers of contemporary architectural theory make manifest the intricacies of interrelations between architecture and violent events. Employing a wide variety of perspectives and methodological approaches, the authors examine some of the most dramatic and unexpected instances of these vexing relations.
From propaganda exhibitions to suburban residential complexes, from slaughterhouses to jails, from illegal settlements to governmental palaces, from separation walls to concentration camps, and finally, from actual, material environments to image-architecture performing through flickering media screens, not only is architecture able to sanction and legitimize violence, but also to give it a spatial ground to thrive.

© Actar Publishers