^ why not just give a few guns to every man, woman and child (dogs too... can't forget about the cute puppies) and let people defend their homes? Sounds just as reasonable as your proposition above. Or better yet, build a giant indestructible dome over the rich folks.

Sounds like you're just going to go ahead with whatever you want anyways even-though the advice your received here is excellent.

I'll repeat it again in case you've decided to come to your senses: Architecture is not a solution to social problems.

@Non Sequitur: 

seriously, what's your problem? 

I am trying to explore solutions for an issue, not create problems! 

take a look at lebbeus woods books...Architecture and War& Radical Reconstruction.. pretty amazing books by an amazing architect.

so what are you going to design zaina?  a house?  a public toilet?  a subway system?  a border fence?  or are you planning on designing every building in a large city?  maybe every building in the country?

you could look at the current war in syria, where a lot of people are fleeing.  if you designed beautiful architecture in syria, the people who live there wouldn't get to enjoy it because they're in jordan, lebanon, turkey, greece etc.

start clarifying your thesis.  all i see so far is that you want to design.  what are you going to design?  housing that doesn't need reconstruction?  Meaning when it blows up and kills everyone inside, someone else can easily move in?  you want housing to become concrete bunkers so the occupants will survive a non-chemical bombing as long as they don't go outside to school or to the grocery store?  or do you just need to put some doric columns on the house so people feel comfortable while their friends and countrymen are getting killed all around them?

i get that you think you care.  can you clarify what it is you care about, what role you think design can play in alleviating what you see to be a problem?

Zaina, 

to rephrase curtkram, i think what he is trying to say is that you need to be more reflective about what role buildings play in a warzone or warring time period.  then you can take a more decisive position for your thesis.  right now you've put the cart before the horse.   

a thesis is an argument that is intended to provide new knowledge.  knowledge that is insightful, honest, verifiable, and rigorous in it's presentation. 

so far a bunch of strangers have trashed your argument in a matter of hours.

what do you think your professors, classmates, and critics will say?   

you posed this question to the forum and you received a lot of beneficial feedback.  

Build massive windowless reinforced concrete structures and you might protect people from some ordinance - we could build houses in Oklahoma that could stand up to tornadoes, but it just isn't a reasonable thing to do, actuarially. The cost of tornado proof construction is too high; rebuilding destroyed homes is cheaper.

And remember, any structure that you can design, someone can destroy - or just kill everyone inside. Bunker buster bombs can penetrate 8 meters of reinforced concrete. Thermobaric weapons just suck all of the air out of a structure, asphyxiating everyone inside.

Trying to design against man's destructive potential is a fool's errand.

. 

amsterdam is designed to prevent war...weed shops, hookers, good beer,...give people that shit and they will never want war...

you notice wars are usually started by people from places that suck...

^ like D.C.

^ Yes lol...

Lol. ok guys/girls.. I don't care!  (jla-x, anonitect,rob_c, and especially the "Non Sequitur") it's very obvious that you're all in same team (a destructive team)... your comments are useless most times and sometimes offensive..! this isn't about the thread any more, this about people like you guys who think they're the top in the world and try to paralyze every hope of any young person posting something on this forum.. PLEASE GROW UP!

jla-x "you notice wars are usually started by people from places that suck..."...Pardon, I didn't get the hint? !

+++ Non, Apparently architecture can't fix stupid either.

Zaina's cup is overflowing.

1. Lebbeus Woods wrote about the reconstruction of cities destroyed in war, not about                 building war-proof cities.

2. Nothing people can build economically can stand up to the effects of high explosives, let         alone protect them from biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons.

3. War is a political problem, not a design problem. (Really.)

4. "Try to paralyze every hope of any young person posting." Ridiculous. I was trying to help         you not make a fool of yourself. Good luck.

Thanks Miles.

zaina, I was sort of joking but there is truth to my statement.  Nations with religious repression (and yes money is a religion and also YES the US is included in this) start wars...people who are busy enjoying the small things in life with less riotousness or greed tend to not go to war as much.  

The state department launched a huge building program in the 1990s after the embassy bombings in africa.  Since then, all of the US embassies abroad are gradually being replaced by fortified structures that can withstand attacks.  Caddell Construction has made a fortune of this work. And some of them are quite beautiful as well.

US embassies have been hardened at great expense, and good architecture has been abandoned because its too easy to get next to - increasing the distance between the structure and the street is the best way of mitigating the effects of a car bomb, which is how embassies are most likely to be attacked. In my opinion, the new embassies seem paranoid, not beautiful. 

I think that the o.p. was interested in protecting civilians. You simply can't design a city to be blast proof, especially since the people who kill civilians are often doing it with an air force and modern munitions, not with homemade car bombs.

OP:

I'm on vacation at the moment and just saw your post...

Let make a few things clear to YOU! :

1) I think your position is incredibly uninformed... you have little bits of information here and there on the subject that you seem like you are trying to fit into an argument that is in line with your position. However, have you thought that your position/premise may be problematic to begin with? You seem like you want to argue something that makes absolutely no sense...

2) Castles - defensive structures - are layered structures. There are walls, motes, gates, etc... yet- the inner most layer- the most intimate is the space where people live and conduct their everyday lives. You cannot enjoy that space if it is always being destroyed or threatened. 

3) Perhaps, instead of looking at war as the catalyst for design, you should look at the idea of privacy and intimacy in architecture where not everyone has access. This also ties into the idea of fantasy and eroticism in architecture, where something is suggested but not fully revealed. If I were your prof, this is the direction I would steer you in. 

But of course, I encourage you to keep on banging your head... you are brilliant as you as you are... 

Zaina, while Architecture can indirectly address social issues, and work over time to change the behavior of society, the reality of warfare simply does not fit in to this narrative at all, and most likely never will in the modern period; the capacity for destruction in war technology has exponentially surpassed the capacity for architecture and urban design to even be involved.  This discussion could have been interesting if we were still in the Medieval period.  I feel like this should have been obvious to be honest.

I'm not trying to put you down, but the idea in designing for perpetual siege or warfare is in itself perverse, especially when faced with the enormous firepower of today's weapons.

On a side note, I feel that you intend to focus on Gaza as an example in this topic.  I would avoid bringing that subject up on Archinect (or any subject related to the "I" and "P" words), otherwise you may invite the wrath of the rabid censorship community that unfortunately dominates this forum.  Also your name is Arabic, which means you're automatically going to receive more hostile posts from certain members of this forum community (you know who you are).

Probably I did not make myself clear since the beginning. I do realize the solution is not merely architectural, but nobody can say that architecture is not evolved. This would require the investigation in military, political, cultural, humanitarian, geographical, topographical and technical studies to result in an architectural, urbanistic theories that can be developed into a schematic design which can then addressed to help citizens in countries engaged in a war… What I expected from this post is some directing and guidance where to look, even really small details and meaningless examples could help (some comments did HELP & I’m really thankful)…

Those who said my thesis is incomplete...Well, this is a research topic n clearly I don’t have a solid studies to form thesis based on them.. 

I hope this discussion is closed, unless somebody wish to add something that can be used or constructively discussed. 

A.I.- I think you're right.

I'd say that an architectural project that proposes "the investigation in military, political, cultural, humanitarian, geographical, topographical and technical studies to result in an architectural, urbanistic theories that can be developed into a schematic design which can then addressed to help citizens" is nonsense, no matter what your screen name is. Good thing AI gave you an easy out though - now you can dismiss anyone who doesn't praise your ill-conceived, poorly articulated idea as a bigot.

anonitect-  "nonsense" ... ? I will not argue with that. I do respect your opinion and I would better appreciate it if you could explain me "why?"...no matter what, this "idea" you're talking about is still an abstract idea in its initial stages, I wish I had the time to work on  during these past two weeks so I can better explain it and support it ... therefore, I wished to close the discussion especially that there're some of you just like "...you know what?..lets attack..".. and sincerely I don't know why..  maybe it does after all make you feel self satisfied attacking others? .. honestly I don't care...

I've seen all the comments on the different threads on this forum, and I can tell which are really helpful and which are just written to make fun and insult... 

Sorry, I can not help myself not replying your comments...

and btw.. my screen name is my name, so go ahead...

Zaina,

Maybe it would be easier if you could be a little more specific. 

I got the impression from your initial post that you were interested in creating a housing typology that would protect residents from bombardment/combat. I just don't think that's a viable idea. As I stated above, our capacity for destruction is too great.

If you were interested in creating a single hardened structure, like an embassy, you could certainly do that, to an extent. But is protecting elites really what you're after?

When you talk about "urban typologies," what exactly are you thinking? A city that's designed to easily drain itself of refugees sounds like a pretty depressing way to do urban design, even in a place with a history of violence. But, designing a place that's wonderful and peaceful won't keep combatants from destroying it - that seems like a non-starter to me, but I could be missing something.

I think that an academic project could focus on violence and the built environment, with a memorial, or a way of reinhabiting the ruins as a symbolic statement being the architectural outcome. Something along those lines seems like it could potentially be interesting.

I reacted negatively to your post about "the investigation in military, political, cultural, humanitarian, geographical, topographical and technical studies..." because your phrasing sounded like the sort of faux-academic language people use when they really don't have anything substantive to say.

RAAAF, Bunker 599

Following the bunker line of thinking, perhaps something underground, even a whole city? Or something from the Continuity of Government (COG) program?

I kind of gave up reading all the comments, but just wanted to point out that Singapore may slightly be relevant in this case.  Given the country's size, and the surrounding region, they have taken quite a few measures to ensure their national security.  The OP may be interested to read up on it, even though the architect's role in all of this is just technical, not really any decision making.

- All new housing, be it an apartment or a bungalow, needs to be constructed with a bomb shelter. (Huge pain... seriously).

- Certain metro stations are civil defense shelters as well

- There are urban planning strategies such as highways with removable planters that can be transformed into a landing strip.

- There is a completely unverified rumor that there are more eldercare and kindergartens located next to the strait, so in case of attach along the border, the population would be more emotional in rallying together.

- Water supply is a huge issue, which has led to the production of making sewage into potable water.

Hope it helps?

Zaina,

You have picked a somewhat controversial topic, hence the 'attacks'.  However, as another female in the profession who is a few years ahead of you, take my words:  your critics will always be there, and you should always be prepared to defend your ideas.   Because that's all we have - IDEAS.  And ideas should never be abandoned just because others don't see it. 

That being said, I think you are approaching this topic too literally.  The beauty of a thesis is in the idea first, execution second.  You have to develop your idea first, THEN think about how to execute it.  Here, it seems like you know what you want to execute and are trying to forcefully fit it into an idea...you are trying to build a theory to let you carry out what you want to do (which is to essentially build war-proof buildings).   

I would suggest stopping here and further familiarizing yourself with the history and theory of architecture and politics.  Read Paul Virilio's "Impure War" (pure war vs impure war), and how since WWII the city itself became the battlefield (transition from geo-politics to metro-politics). Read about the theory of "globalitarianism".  I can't emphasize enough Eyal Wiszman's "Hollow Land", which is about the politics of separation in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, flexible territories, liquid geographies, islands and enclaves (how cities are built and transform with war!).  Robert Bevan's "Enemies of Architecture & Memory".  

Take what you learn about resiliency, war, politics, and how it all interrelates with architecture.  You might end up with a completely different way of executing your ideas, more than just building shatter-proof/bomb shelters.  (can we make buildings that become STRONGER with war? what about looking at it from a larger, urban scale?  can we make cities that are more resilient to war, and responsive to the after-effects/consequences of it?)  maybe you don't want to focus on bombing, but rather political conflict, as that's the root of all war...

Good luck.  

Nam, i visited the Underground city in Beijing 15 years ago, have to find the old photos (real film)....

Singapore on many levels is very interesting, all the way from Rem Koolhaas analysis in S, M, X, XL to their urban housing and race mixing, and something I just learned from bmedi.

from above - yes to anything Paul Virilio

Ctheory Interview With Paul Virilio - The Kosovo War Took Place In Orbital Space

@olaf would like to see those...