in the 21 century, and particularly in the past few years, architects have designed invisible buildings, and other buildings and structures that transform mechanically and electrically! it is very clear now (even for freshmen students in the architecture college) that architecture is a discipline of problem solving, innovation, and invention that is not limited to sculptural figurative design. architects now are willing to examine scientific theories along with their design process, and this really make me wondering why architects have not until now figure out a king or urban design/ architecture shelters or permanent dwellings that are safe in case of wars?
there are cities or countries that are permanently under attack, and whenever I open the TV news, I can only see people dying and constructions going down, and I keep thinking... what can be the role of me as an architect in all this? why they keep designing highrise boxed buildings.. waiting it until its construction is finished, and then it goes down again? should we stop designing this way in countries that expect attack and need new measures of safety ?! aren't architects after all the ones who are responsible for design housing that does not need reconstruction?
there's a long and interesting history of tunnel design with war in mind. recently many palestinian tunnels were destroyed. before that you could look toward vietnam or germany during ww2. even in the US you could look at the greenbrier.
I don't know what sort of transformer buildings you're referring to.
the purpose of a war is to kill people. that isn't some unfortunate side effect which can be mitigated through thoughtful design.
if we had remained living in wooden huts clustered together heavy artillery and nuclear weapons may never have been developed, as a disciplined clutch of men with pitchforks and torches could destroy a city and its occupants in a few hours. whatever future tech adaptive safety systems we design today will simply necessitate the development of next generation counter-safety systems.
war is the fundamental flaw in human nature which marks us as just another form of animal.
The purpose of war is to control resources, which are generally recognized as territories inhabited by others. It's been that way since before we were swinging from branches.
Architecture was always part of the arms race. Technology changed that, no fortress is impregnable. Sad how the OP sees the solution in hardened structures rather than human behavior.
"Sad how the OP sees the solution in hardened structures rather than human behavior."
The real sad thing is that this line of thought is very common in grad school... if I had a nickle for every thesis I've seen where any random problem could easily be solved with "architecture"... more often than not, this architecture was nothing more than urban furniture that doubled up as movie projector screens, or kiosk, or useless hipster leaning posts...
Perhaps these are the transformer buildings the Op makes reference to.
"Sad how the OP sees the solution in hardened structures rather than human behavior."
I do not think we can suggest hardened structure in this case, eventually, it would cost the country in war costs and resources that it does not have especially when it's under attack!
@midlander: I totally agree with all of what you've just wrote! but that does not mean we should reconstruct every building and every infrastructure that is destroyed exactly the same way! what I am thinking of, not as an expert, , is a new smart way of urban planning, urban design! or a new meaning of shelters that integrates in the social life of the city! the weapons technology will still be developed, but lets think of the solution of today...
the meaning of urban design/planning and housing in Gaza city ,as an example, is just a copy of how we develop our own cities which doesn't make sense at all! I believe that this city, and different other cities should be developed in another way considering it's own circumstances!
"Architecture is not the solution to political problems and idiotic battles over superstitions." that's the short answer to this thread.
zaina, i can't imagine a more cynical and depressing city than one which is utterly hardened in concrete or "made invisible" with some Predator style cloaking for the sake of surviving a war.
maybe you'd like to see inflatable buildings everywhere in which arsenal bounces off and disintegrates into fertilizer for flowers?
"War is a fact of life" according to General Ripper - When I was a just a kid, my father took us all down to the fabrication company where he worked as an engineer to show us a bomb shelter to impress upon us the grim reality of how life would be lived in a nuclear war - the architecture of doom
Actually Zaina, I think that you are being short sighted. You need to realise the limitations of architecture and the appropriate role it has in society. You may be using a hammer on a screw...If you want to find solutions to war zone living you should not start with the preconcieved notion that the soulution is architectural. maybe it is, but first you should research and keep an open mind rather than try and pound away on the screw...
Actually, I find it a bit arrogant when students assume that the best solution to all complex problems happens to be related to their chosen field...often its not...
so there is currently a large wave of people fleeing syria trying to get to germany or wherever else they can get in order to escape war.
would the architectural solution be to give them a better place to live in syria, so they can live comfortably alongside the war, or build tenement housing in germany/turkey/greece/etc. to help give them somewhere to flee to?
with all my respect to all comments, what I've learnt during this 4 years of studying architecture, is that "Architecture" IS NOT limited to sculptural figurative design.. it does include the notion of problem solving,innovation, and invention! "Architecture" is not limited to building design, it expands to include urban design and urban planning!
most architects days market " environmental sustainability through architecture" and " zero carbon buildings" while all of us know that it is a myth! sustainability issues is something that can not be addressed through architecture! a building is a footprint no matter what you add to it or how you design it!
"Architecture is not the solution to political problems and idiotic battles over superstitions"
architecture IS a major part of the solution! I am not suggesting to save lives, I am suggesting not to build something that is going to fall!
Design modular & indestructible building blocks in various shapes... like lego. So that when the baddies come and blow everything up because they don't like your choice of footwear, or the name of your invisible sky-daddies, it's pretty easy to pick up the pieces and stack them up again. Perhaps this new assembly can be a representation, an homage if you will, to the events that just happened:
I would love to see people reassemble their homes and business as a giant middle finger (or a statue of the baddie's deity fornicating with a donkey) out of the rubble.
Now that's vision!
Zaina, you have not learned much in 4-years if that is all you take out of your education.
.....thanks everybody who positively contributed in this thread..:)
@ Non Sequitur:
I do not suggest you to underestimate my delusions just because I am a student ...! eventually, all great things was a result of STUPID dreams! ..... you're very provoking! and all of your negative hostile comments indicates your low self esteem....
"Zaina, you have not learned much in 4-years if that is all you take out of your education."
oh yeah! maybe I can learn something from you in case you've learnt anything in you 5 years and your whole practice in the field!!!
with all my respect to all comments, what I've learnt during this 4 years of studying architecture, is that "Architecture" IS NOT limited to sculptural figurative design.
This is absolutely true, and if your school took four years to teach you this....well, I question why it wasn't offered on the first day.
I asked Cameron Sinclair once, when Architecture for Humanity was just getting big, how he kept from just throwing up his hands and saying "But this problem can't be addressed by architecture, it's a policy change!". His response was more or less that he is deeply aware that so many of the things that concern him in the world don't demand architectural solutions, but that he personally is interested in architecture, so that's where he looks to make an impact. The balance then becomes to make sure that his architectural solutions don't inhibit the possibility for future policy change, and maybe even enhance it by fostering a social climate where social demand can bring about policy change.
yeah, instead of two towers now we have only one, and it's all reflective glass, a harder target....nobody in their right mind would design anything for war. maybe dick cheney.
@ JLC-1:" some people still need to change, but we are centuries past these " ...
yes exactly! do you even understand what I am talking about? or you're just following the herd? what towers you're talking about? defensive walls? no thanks
Rather, create a place of beauty and peace...provide opportunity for economic and social prosperity...self sufficiency...architecture is good for that stuff...
Z, I think it is you who doesn't understand, I'm not following any herd if there is one; it's the 21st century, we should be talking about no more wars EVER.
Wars as we know them now are fought by computers and the greatest threats to structures are either from a very distant missile launcher or from a guy wrapped in C4, there is no way to design cities or buildings that could account for this and everything in between, unless you can show us where are those invisible buildings, I assume in invisible cities.
If you don't know what towers I'm talking about it's not my fault.
the idea behind designing for wars is not to create wars, maintain wars, nor support it ! but to help wars victim to have as possible safe life during wars! lets switch the keyword "city" to "shelter".. a new meaning of shelters design! a shelter on a large scale that do integrate social life even in times of peace which falls under the category of "urban design"..
of course I am using this thread page as a bouncing board to study some of the professionals' reactions towards the idea,still, I think it is very possible especially with the help of technology these days, and I am pretty sure I'll get some results after lots experiments I wish to do..
JLC-1: "no more wars EVER" : that's everybody's wish
Surely a book about "siege urbanism" by an architect/engineer is appropriate.
Sep 11, 15 2:33 pm ·
·
War is death
Architecture is creation
Creation is about life.
Metaphor said...
With the fundamental part of war is the decay of rational civility to the point of mass destruction and killing over could have otherwise been solved with civility and peace.
Architecture is about development, creation and promotion of life, vitality and so forth.
This is very much opposite of war. Therefore, we must be mindful of outcomes. There can be argument of destruction for redevelopment but the life is distinguishable from irrational killing of people just because of ideological difference in perspective about a matter... a dispute gone horribly bad.
Architecture may raise dispute. Architecture may cause demolition of old to make way for something new. The difference is distinct from war. In architecture, there is rational and there is civility. When we lose civility and rational thought to a horrible level, we have war.
I believe we design architecture for life building not life killing. We build architecture to build vitality not perpetuate decay of civilization.
I'll hold at this point and let the dialogue be there.
in Albania under Enver Hoxha they tried just that, making safe places by installing a lot of bunkers everywhere and making highway infrastructure highly inefficient. as someone has noted above war is much different today so these types of facilities and methods are not very useful,but here is a historical example.... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunkers_in_Albania
one of the Architecural Journals issues of Log has an essay on these bunkers by Hoxha. Also an older Log issue discusses Israeli urban military tactics using Architecture, so take that and try an inverse approach...........................but the new war is very different and has led to many shitty interupptions to the urban landscape........since the terrorists are usually lone wolf psychopaths maybe in a van or something,public facilities like Penn Station or Port Authority have reinstalled or installed super bollards of steel at sidewalks to prevent just that - a guy in a van with tons of fertilizer and fuel barrelling towards an urban hub or center......the Freedom Tower that replaced the Twin Towers building core is 16,000 psi concrete, typical is 3000 but can get as high 8000 psi on a highrise..........................generally speaking Architecture is an efficient part of the city infrastructure. if the buildings are blown up then it makes it hard for the city to be productive and therefore essentially earn an income which in turn maintains a higher life style. the alternate would be to make cities that need little to no connective or clear infrastructure to maintain production of value.....blow this up -so what - we all still go to work and our kids to schools - this would be an interesting scenario.....but as alluded above architecture is pretty static and performs in this static state most efficiently.............nomads do not need static infrastructure to subsist and the bug anti urbanist Ghengis Khan sure as hell did not need it..............you are getting into a weird world via this route. Guy Debord then to Bernard Tschumi and Parc de LaVillette with its follies and strange "anti-structural" interventions that even become structural due to the static nature of Architecture........as Balkins explains above Architecture to a degree is the opposite of war and you are asking can Architecture maintain its services to the people in the face of war? if you want to go 21st century think of ways to make airport security less annoying because of terrorists,make big brother less an intrusive because of terrorists and in a way urban planning an architecture immune to war.........which reminds me of the news report about a missile killing 4 kids playing in a war zone. clearly that world was still their infrastructure and architecture and they as kids do went out and played.........in this regard its more a Lebbeus Woods route, take the debri and rebuild the city from it and live in this as the city..............in summary the biggesr move you could make is an urban infrastructure that maintains itself regardless of war.
OP- the whole idea behind design is that society gets to enjoy what gets built... in a sense architecture is a luxury while a construction/structure is a necessity. Designing for war is more of a functional design problem, much like a bridge is during peace time. And only those who win the war get to enjoy architecture...
Olfa- "the biggest move you could make is an urban infrastructure that maintains itself regardless of war"... I agree, but surely not sthg like Hoxha bunkers.
@ BulgarBlogger- let me make acouple of stuffs clear for you...
regarding " the whole idea behind design is that society gets to enjoy what gets built" ...I totally disagree; human emotional needs are far beyond "enjoying" ... #1- they need to feel safe,...! do you think that those people going to enjoy their luxurious architecture getting destroyed or their children dying?
"in a sense architecture is a luxury..." are you sure? today almost 20% of the population are in absolute poverty, and the other 80% can no longer afford luxurios architecture nor can our mother earth...! do you think that architecture can not be beutiful unless it is luxurious? how about vituvious three elements of architecture.. stregnth, functionality, and beauty? do you think that we can not design for the poor or for wars victims otherwise it will be.."a functional design problem"!! ... Architecture is always part of the problem and has to be also part of the solution, and when I will be designing for war victims, I'll not be only calcuating stregnths and moments of interia or any other technical issues which is engineer's jobs... I WILL DESIGN,meaning by that, that I have many variables to consider such as 1- psycological issues-how the people will feel safe? less horrored? pulled togather? how to create and maintain social solidarity between them? what activities am I going to provide them? how those activities are going to affect them? and what people will feel when using the space "architecture or urban".
2- accessability and functionality- functionalty in term how those structures are going to function in times of peace? how it will function in times of war? how those functions are going to help sustain the city and survive? how can be developed to be major part of the city?
3- beauty- its relationship with the city, with the landscape, with other buildings?.. how it looks?.. how it feels like?... does it look like something will cause people more horror in times of war? does it have to be a dark place of steel and hardened concrete? ....! sun, circulation, etc
Designing for wars ?
in the 21 century, and particularly in the past few years, architects have designed invisible buildings, and other buildings and structures that transform mechanically and electrically! it is very clear now (even for freshmen students in the architecture college) that architecture is a discipline of problem solving, innovation, and invention that is not limited to sculptural figurative design. architects now are willing to examine scientific theories along with their design process, and this really make me wondering why architects have not until now figure out a king or urban design/ architecture shelters or permanent dwellings that are safe in case of wars?
there are cities or countries that are permanently under attack, and whenever I open the TV news, I can only see people dying and constructions going down, and I keep thinking... what can be the role of me as an architect in all this? why they keep designing highrise boxed buildings.. waiting it until its construction is finished, and then it goes down again? should we stop designing this way in countries that expect attack and need new measures of safety ?! aren't architects after all the ones who are responsible for design housing that does not need reconstruction?
Architecture is not the solution to political problems and idiotic battles over superstitions.
there's a long and interesting history of tunnel design with war in mind. recently many palestinian tunnels were destroyed. before that you could look toward vietnam or germany during ww2. even in the US you could look at the greenbrier.
I don't know what sort of transformer buildings you're referring to.
the purpose of a war is to kill people. that isn't some unfortunate side effect which can be mitigated through thoughtful design.
if we had remained living in wooden huts clustered together heavy artillery and nuclear weapons may never have been developed, as a disciplined clutch of men with pitchforks and torches could destroy a city and its occupants in a few hours. whatever future tech adaptive safety systems we design today will simply necessitate the development of next generation counter-safety systems.
war is the fundamental flaw in human nature which marks us as just another form of animal.
The purpose of war is to control resources, which are generally recognized as territories inhabited by others. It's been that way since before we were swinging from branches.
Architecture was always part of the arms race. Technology changed that, no fortress is impregnable. Sad how the OP sees the solution in hardened structures rather than human behavior.
Wait, I missed invisible buildings?
You didn't see them?
Miles has it right:
"Sad how the OP sees the solution in hardened structures rather than human behavior."
The real sad thing is that this line of thought is very common in grad school... if I had a nickle for every thesis I've seen where any random problem could easily be solved with "architecture"... more often than not, this architecture was nothing more than urban furniture that doubled up as movie projector screens, or kiosk, or useless hipster leaning posts...
Perhaps these are the transformer buildings the Op makes reference to.
i assume advancing the war machine is more profitable than asking people to stop going to war.
^agree with all of the above.
@ Miles:
"Sad how the OP sees the solution in hardened structures rather than human behavior."
I do not think we can suggest hardened structure in this case, eventually, it would cost the country in war costs and resources that it does not have especially when it's under attack!
@ Non Sequitur:
YOU LACK VISION!
Somebody sat down and designed Auschwitz.
@midlander: I totally agree with all of what you've just wrote! but that does not mean we should reconstruct every building and every infrastructure that is destroyed exactly the same way! what I am thinking of, not as an expert, , is a new smart way of urban planning, urban design! or a new meaning of shelters that integrates in the social life of the city! the weapons technology will still be developed, but lets think of the solution of today...
the meaning of urban design/planning and housing in Gaza city ,as an example, is just a copy of how we develop our own cities which doesn't make sense at all! I believe that this city, and different other cities should be developed in another way considering it's own circumstances!
"Architecture is not the solution to political problems and idiotic battles over superstitions." that's the short answer to this thread.
zaina, i can't imagine a more cynical and depressing city than one which is utterly hardened in concrete or "made invisible" with some Predator style cloaking for the sake of surviving a war.
maybe you'd like to see inflatable buildings everywhere in which arsenal bounces off and disintegrates into fertilizer for flowers?
"War is a fact of life" according to General Ripper - When I was a just a kid, my father took us all down to the fabrication company where he worked as an engineer to show us a bomb shelter to impress upon us the grim reality of how life would be lived in a nuclear war - the architecture of doom
Actually Zaina, I think that you are being short sighted. You need to realise the limitations of architecture and the appropriate role it has in society. You may be using a hammer on a screw...If you want to find solutions to war zone living you should not start with the preconcieved notion that the soulution is architectural. maybe it is, but first you should research and keep an open mind rather than try and pound away on the screw...
Actually, I find it a bit arrogant when students assume that the best solution to all complex problems happens to be related to their chosen field...often its not...
@Zaina:
You lack rational thinking skills.
ah, student delusions. I do not miss them.
so there is currently a large wave of people fleeing syria trying to get to germany or wherever else they can get in order to escape war.
would the architectural solution be to give them a better place to live in syria, so they can live comfortably alongside the war, or build tenement housing in germany/turkey/greece/etc. to help give them somewhere to flee to?
with all my respect to all comments, what I've learnt during this 4 years of studying architecture, is that "Architecture" IS NOT limited to sculptural figurative design.. it does include the notion of problem solving,innovation, and invention! "Architecture" is not limited to building design, it expands to include urban design and urban planning!
most architects days market " environmental sustainability through architecture" and " zero carbon buildings" while all of us know that it is a myth! sustainability issues is something that can not be addressed through architecture! a building is a footprint no matter what you add to it or how you design it!
"Architecture is not the solution to political problems and idiotic battles over superstitions"
architecture IS a major part of the solution! I am not suggesting to save lives, I am suggesting not to build something that is going to fall!
if the idea is to help them live comfortable in a warzone, have you considered a coffee kiosk?
Curt, perhaps a mixture of both.
Design modular & indestructible building blocks in various shapes... like lego. So that when the baddies come and blow everything up because they don't like your choice of footwear, or the name of your invisible sky-daddies, it's pretty easy to pick up the pieces and stack them up again. Perhaps this new assembly can be a representation, an homage if you will, to the events that just happened:
I would love to see people reassemble their homes and business as a giant middle finger (or a statue of the baddie's deity fornicating with a donkey) out of the rubble.
Now that's vision!
Zaina, you have not learned much in 4-years if that is all you take out of your education.
BTW - today is 9/11 - seems like we have been at war for 14 years so far
.....thanks everybody who positively contributed in this thread..:)
@ Non Sequitur:
I do not suggest you to underestimate my delusions just because I am a student ...! eventually, all great things was a result of STUPID dreams! ..... you're very provoking! and all of your negative hostile comments indicates your low self esteem....
"Zaina, you have not learned much in 4-years if that is all you take out of your education."
oh yeah! maybe I can learn something from you in case you've learnt anything in you 5 years and your whole practice in the field!!!
STOP blowing" the topic" away!
Brilliant reference, Xenakis.
Apparently architecture can't fix stupid either.
with all my respect to all comments, what I've learnt during this 4 years of studying architecture, is that "Architecture" IS NOT limited to sculptural figurative design.
This is absolutely true, and if your school took four years to teach you this....well, I question why it wasn't offered on the first day.
I asked Cameron Sinclair once, when Architecture for Humanity was just getting big, how he kept from just throwing up his hands and saying "But this problem can't be addressed by architecture, it's a policy change!". His response was more or less that he is deeply aware that so many of the things that concern him in the world don't demand architectural solutions, but that he personally is interested in architecture, so that's where he looks to make an impact. The balance then becomes to make sure that his architectural solutions don't inhibit the possibility for future policy change, and maybe even enhance it by fostering a social climate where social demand can bring about policy change.
yeah, instead of two towers now we have only one, and it's all reflective glass, a harder target....nobody in their right mind would design anything for war. maybe dick cheney.
the world has changed, some people still need to change, but we are centuries past these already https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_with_defensive_walls
^ great point JLC-1
I love those old stone walls in Quebec city. The last of it's kind in North America.
thanks Donna...
@ JLC-1:" some people still need to change, but we are centuries past these " ...
yes exactly! do you even understand what I am talking about? or you're just following the herd? what towers you're talking about? defensive walls? no thanks
how about designing for peace? A city Designed for perpetual war seems like it would breed a culture designed for perpetual war...
Rather, create a place of beauty and peace...provide opportunity for economic and social prosperity...self sufficiency...architecture is good for that stuff...
Z, I think it is you who doesn't understand, I'm not following any herd if there is one; it's the 21st century, we should be talking about no more wars EVER.
Wars as we know them now are fought by computers and the greatest threats to structures are either from a very distant missile launcher or from a guy wrapped in C4, there is no way to design cities or buildings that could account for this and everything in between, unless you can show us where are those invisible buildings, I assume in invisible cities.
If you don't know what towers I'm talking about it's not my fault.
the idea behind designing for wars is not to create wars, maintain wars, nor support it ! but to help wars victim to have as possible safe life during wars! lets switch the keyword "city" to "shelter".. a new meaning of shelters design! a shelter on a large scale that do integrate social life even in times of peace which falls under the category of "urban design"..
of course I am using this thread page as a bouncing board to study some of the professionals' reactions towards the idea,still, I think it is very possible especially with the help of technology these days, and I am pretty sure I'll get some results after lots experiments I wish to do..
JLC-1: "no more wars EVER" : that's everybody's wish
thanks for the positive comments (all) ...
let the herd know about those results, please
^absolutely rob, did you see this stupid exercise? http://archinect.com/news/article/136357519/passage-an-architectural-intervention-to-span-the-mediterranean-sea
I'm so tired of "architectural interventions"
The suggestion that this is a novel approach to architecture is not accurate.
I've brought this book up before in a thread about panopticons, but look at "Annals of a Fortress: Twenty-two Centuries of Siege Warfare" by Viollet-le-Duc.
Surely a book about "siege urbanism" by an architect/engineer is appropriate.
War is death
Architecture is creation
Creation is about life.
Metaphor said...
With the fundamental part of war is the decay of rational civility to the point of mass destruction and killing over could have otherwise been solved with civility and peace.
Architecture is about development, creation and promotion of life, vitality and so forth.
This is very much opposite of war. Therefore, we must be mindful of outcomes. There can be argument of destruction for redevelopment but the life is distinguishable from irrational killing of people just because of ideological difference in perspective about a matter... a dispute gone horribly bad.
Architecture may raise dispute. Architecture may cause demolition of old to make way for something new. The difference is distinct from war. In architecture, there is rational and there is civility. When we lose civility and rational thought to a horrible level, we have war.
I believe we design architecture for life building not life killing. We build architecture to build vitality not perpetuate decay of civilization.
I'll hold at this point and let the dialogue be there.
http://www.falloutfacts.com/vaults/all-vault-experiments.html
+++++ jla-x, create the world you want to live in.
^that's a whole another topic, how today's videogames are training our kids for war
This is Sparta?
Now this post has some context.
in Albania under Enver Hoxha they tried just that, making safe places by installing a lot of bunkers everywhere and making highway infrastructure highly inefficient. as someone has noted above war is much different today so these types of facilities and methods are not very useful,but here is a historical example.... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunkers_in_Albania one of the Architecural Journals issues of Log has an essay on these bunkers by Hoxha. Also an older Log issue discusses Israeli urban military tactics using Architecture, so take that and try an inverse approach...........................but the new war is very different and has led to many shitty interupptions to the urban landscape........since the terrorists are usually lone wolf psychopaths maybe in a van or something,public facilities like Penn Station or Port Authority have reinstalled or installed super bollards of steel at sidewalks to prevent just that - a guy in a van with tons of fertilizer and fuel barrelling towards an urban hub or center......the Freedom Tower that replaced the Twin Towers building core is 16,000 psi concrete, typical is 3000 but can get as high 8000 psi on a highrise..........................generally speaking Architecture is an efficient part of the city infrastructure. if the buildings are blown up then it makes it hard for the city to be productive and therefore essentially earn an income which in turn maintains a higher life style. the alternate would be to make cities that need little to no connective or clear infrastructure to maintain production of value.....blow this up -so what - we all still go to work and our kids to schools - this would be an interesting scenario.....but as alluded above architecture is pretty static and performs in this static state most efficiently.............nomads do not need static infrastructure to subsist and the bug anti urbanist Ghengis Khan sure as hell did not need it..............you are getting into a weird world via this route. Guy Debord then to Bernard Tschumi and Parc de LaVillette with its follies and strange "anti-structural" interventions that even become structural due to the static nature of Architecture........as Balkins explains above Architecture to a degree is the opposite of war and you are asking can Architecture maintain its services to the people in the face of war? if you want to go 21st century think of ways to make airport security less annoying because of terrorists,make big brother less an intrusive because of terrorists and in a way urban planning an architecture immune to war.........which reminds me of the news report about a missile killing 4 kids playing in a war zone. clearly that world was still their infrastructure and architecture and they as kids do went out and played.........in this regard its more a Lebbeus Woods route, take the debri and rebuild the city from it and live in this as the city..............in summary the biggesr move you could make is an urban infrastructure that maintains itself regardless of war.
this was an interesting thread? what happened, ADD? (attention deficit disorder)
OP- the whole idea behind design is that society gets to enjoy what gets built... in a sense architecture is a luxury while a construction/structure is a necessity. Designing for war is more of a functional design problem, much like a bridge is during peace time. And only those who win the war get to enjoy architecture...
Olfa- "the biggest move you could make is an urban infrastructure that maintains itself regardless of war"... I agree, but surely not sthg like Hoxha bunkers.
@ BulgarBlogger- let me make acouple of stuffs clear for you...
regarding " the whole idea behind design is that society gets to enjoy what gets built" ...I totally disagree; human emotional needs are far beyond "enjoying" ... #1- they need to feel safe,...! do you think that those people going to enjoy their luxurious architecture getting destroyed or their children dying?
"in a sense architecture is a luxury..." are you sure? today almost 20% of the population are in absolute poverty, and the other 80% can no longer afford luxurios architecture nor can our mother earth...! do you think that architecture can not be beutiful unless it is luxurious? how about vituvious three elements of architecture.. stregnth, functionality, and beauty? do you think that we can not design for the poor or for wars victims otherwise it will be.."a functional design problem"!! ... Architecture is always part of the problem and has to be also part of the solution, and when I will be designing for war victims, I'll not be only calcuating stregnths and moments of interia or any other technical issues which is engineer's jobs... I WILL DESIGN,meaning by that, that I have many variables to consider such as 1- psycological issues-how the people will feel safe? less horrored? pulled togather? how to create and maintain social solidarity between them? what activities am I going to provide them? how those activities are going to affect them? and what people will feel when using the space "architecture or urban".
2- accessability and functionality- functionalty in term how those structures are going to function in times of peace? how it will function in times of war? how those functions are going to help sustain the city and survive? how can be developed to be major part of the city?
3- beauty- its relationship with the city, with the landscape, with other buildings?.. how it looks?.. how it feels like?... does it look like something will cause people more horror in times of war? does it have to be a dark place of steel and hardened concrete? ....! sun, circulation, etc
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