Archinect - News

Overdevelopment, conflict, and climate change pose biggest threats to global cultural sites, World Monuments Fund warns

2024-09-13T17:25:00-04:00

Ahead of its January 2025 release of the World Monuments Watch list, the World Monuments Fund has announced the greatest factors threatening heritage sites globally are conflict, climate change, "overtourism," a lack of financial support and community engagement, and an extenuating state of overdevelopment.

The organization says they are doing so now in the interest of “sounding the alarm" and raising awareness while the final site included in its next watch list is still being deliberated. The WMF has not produced such documentation since 2022, when it found 25 sites as being under threat. The tenor of threats varies by region, with a majority (58%) of those surveyed in North America & Europe under threat due to "insufficient funding and resources." A total of 200 sites were nominated worldwide.

New AIANY exhibition details how architecture has become a vital weapon in Ukraine’s fight to survive

2024-06-20T14:57:00-04:00

In the third year of this epochal war — which has destroyed some 210,000 buildings, according to a recent New York Times investigation — Russian forces continue to target civilian habitations in contravention of international law. When the city is a battleground, architecture becomes an act of defense and defiance.

Writing for the New York Times, critic Jason Farago deconstructs ‘Constructing Hope: Ukraine’ for its opening at the Center for Architecture. War always produces a kind of necessary architecture, but, he argues, the difference in this conflict is an all-hands (including busy techno djs) approach that has restored its reputation as well as a “common good” previously left behind in the country’s two-decade drive towards a “turbo capitalist” economy.

Curated by Ashley Bigham, Betty Roytburd, and Sasha Topolnytska, ‘Constructing Hope: Ukraine’ is open to the public now and will remain on view at the Center for Architecture’s 536 LaGuardia Place gallery in Manhattan until September 3rd.

ALNY chat discusses 'Domicide' and its application to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza

2024-06-11T12:05:00-04:00

How might this destruction be stopped? International law remains one of the only paths to seek accountability. And it is not only lawyers who make its systems function. Through their stewardship of the built environment (including long-standing engagement with the right to housing and the politics of climate change), architects, planners, and preservationists can shed light on the techniques, procedures, and consequences of modern urban warfare. They also have the potential to change them.

Berlin-based Palestinian urbanist and scholar Natasha Aruri, formerly of the TU Berlin, breaks down the concept of ‘domicide’ with MIT's Balakrishnan Rajagopal and SITU founding partner Brad Samuels. The term can be traced to the 2001 title Domicide: The Global Destruction of Home, but has roots in modern conflict (namely the U.S. bombing of Japan and Germany during World War II). The most recent reporting from human rights groups, including the UNWRA, has said that more than half of all buildings in Gaza have been destroyed since fighting began there on October 7th.

New U.N. report warns of potential decades-long rebuild for Gaza

2024-05-09T12:02:00-04:00

A new report on the socio-economic situation in Gaza from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has established a baseline for rebuilding as a cease-fire deal that would end the seven-month Israel-Hamas war continues to be up in the air. The findings lay out the most realistic timeline for recovery, which first requires an estimated 37 million tons of debris removal and the construction of temporary shelters for Palestinians who have lost more than 80,000 of their homes since the fighting began in October.

Israel will have to allow five times the volume of construction materials as it had after its two most recent incursions in order for Gazans to regain "normalcy" by 2040. The UNDP stated it would likely take another four decades to rebuild entirely, given the number of damaged residential structures. Around 25,000 buildings have been reported destroyed in Gaza, with 32 hospitals now knocked offline and another 100 schools or universities being completely destroyed, accordi...

Russian attacks destroy acclaimed Ukrainian design academy in Kyiv

2024-03-30T08:00:00-04:00

Various Ukrainian news outlets are reporting the recent near-total destruction of the Mykhailo Boichuk State Academy of Decorative and Applied Arts and Design in Kyiv from a Russian missile attack in the morning hours of Monday, March 25th.

"During this morning's attack on Kyiv, as a result of falling fragments of a missile launched by the Russian Federation, the central part of the building at the Kyiv State Academy of Decorative and Applied Arts and Design named after Mykhailo Boichuk was destroyed, particularly the sports hall, congress hall and exhibition center. The premises of the departments and the auditorium of the institution suffered significant damage," a press update from the country's Ministry of Culture and Information Policy reads.

Image: Helen Osadch via Facebook

News reports indicated that only two people were injured during the attack, which was part of a larger aerial assault on the capital's Pecherskyi and Solomianskyi districts. (You can read more about the att...

A Palestinian architect looks for a future in Gaza’s rubble

2024-02-05T11:47:00-05:00

Over 60% of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed. But it's also the heritage, the culture, the collective memory. So it's important for us to rethink how to rebuild, how to accommodate one of the highest densely populated spots on Earth. Do we go vertical? Do we go horizontal? You've got an urban fabric. You've got a coastal fabric. You've got a rural fabric. Each one requires a different way of looking at it.

Yara Sharif is the London-based co-founder of the group Architects for Gaza. The Palestinian architect tells NPR the task now is to assemble a society literally of the rubble using the remnants of some 200,000 buildings that have been destroyed and in the most environmentally sensitive ways possible. A top-down solution that keeps Palestinians out of any post-war rebuilding process has been a growing concern for activists, who brought the issue to the International Court of Justice as part of South Africa's attempt to use it to stop the violence in December.

To date, the IDF’s military strategy has razed more than 70% of all residential structures, plus another 20 or so hospitals and approximately 350 schools. Its plan to establish a 23-square-mile "buffer zone" within the Gaza Strip's borders has become another recent point of contention (h/t LA Times).

UNESCO adds three heritage sites to its 'in-danger' list

2023-01-26T12:15:00-05:00

The historic center of the Ukrainian port city of Odesa and sites in Yemen and Lebanon were added to the World Heritage List Wednesday by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). All three sites were simultaneously added to UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger. The statement said that the decision would give Ukraine access to “technical and financial international assistance” to protect and rehabilitate the city center.

Both the Yemeni site and, of course, Odesa were placed under the category in response to the ongoing conflicts afflicting both countries. The latter being of constant "grave concern” to the UN’s cultural body since its inception 11 months ago.

The third site, Rachid Karami International Fair in Tripoli, was designed by Oscar Niemeyer prior to the beginning of his exile from Brazil in the early 1960s. It had been left unfinished as a result of the long Lebanese Civil War that began in 1975. UNESCO’s nomination text cites “[an] alarming state of conservation, the lack of financial resources for its maintenance, and the latent risk of development proposals” as the reason for its inscription.

Despite stigma and war, preservationists are fighting to keep Ukraine's Soviet-era architecture intact

2022-05-10T12:45:00-04:00

Attitudes towards Soviet-era architectural heritage are divided in Ukraine. Some value the country’s modernist, post-modernist and brutalist buildings for their sharpness and conciseness of form, for their functionality and concrete simplicity. But for others they stand as an unwanted reminder of Ukraine’s Soviet past, and much of this built heritage has come under threat in recent years.

Ukraine’s pre-WWII cultural infrastructure has been a focus of the press and comprises the vast majority of listed buildings in Ukraine’s state database. Examples of Soviet-era architecture are, however, systemically less protected. Their plight is being well-documented by social media activists like ukrainemodernism and has reignited a debate amongst preservationists inside Ukraine as to their rightful place in a country some feel is under threat of losing its national identity.

“Any way you put it, it’s our heritage,” photographer Dmytro Soloviov told Al Jazeera of his personal philosophy. “Regardless of your political affiliation, these are buildings and art objects that were created by Ukrainians.”

The preservationist cause is also being folded into the country’s plans to rebuild following the cessation of hostilities. Some hope they will include the Stalinist and Soviet-era s...

Putin pushes for strategic art museum complex in annexed Crimea

2018-09-07T18:07:00-04:00

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, has ordered officials to speed up the construction of a cultural centre in Sevastopol, the historic naval capital of Crimea, which will include exhibition space for the State Hermitage Museum, the State Russian Museum and the State Tretyakov Gallery. Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. In May this year, Putin inaugurated a $7.5bn bridge to link the Crimean city of Kerch with the Russian mainland.

Why Modern Architecture Struggles to Inspire Catholics

2014-09-02T13:45:00-04:00

Outside a few rare examples such as Ronchamp, I sense that Modernism has failed to deliver an architecture that connects with most Catholics and other traditional Christians. Much of this has to do with fact that Modernism as a cultural movement is inherently atheistic as it is based on a secular materialist philosophy.