From Police to Dissidence: the Possibilities of Architecture in the Belarusian Situation
The events of the past three years that have befallen the region seem hardly bearable: first, the world pandemic, after — the unprecedented scale repression in Belarus and the horrifying war unleashed by Russia in Ukraine. However, their weight and intractability force us to reconsider our approach to familiar processes. Among them is the field of architecture, petrified by the intensity of the events. Including political reality in the architectural agenda will help to give it a new life: to critically examine the processes inside the sphere and even to discover the potential that will enable its representatives to acquire an active position by participation in politics.
Introduction
Even though repression in Belarus has affected all the fields of activity, from healthcare and the economy to politics and culture, initiatives have emerged in these fields, able to adapt to crisis conditions and take an active political stance. Media, forced to work from outside the country, have learned new formats of working with the audience. With the help of IT specialists, medical workers have created new services in other countries; Economists suggest alternative economic strategies, artists actively respond not only to the situation in Belarus but to the Ukrainian one as well.
However, one question remains: how have the representatives of the architectural community responded? Of course, like all other members of professional communities, architects have participated in protests and other forms of political mobilisation. As a result, many of them have been persecuted for political reasons. But this activity is rather related to the civic position and has nothing to do directly with architecture as such — architecture remains out of the political context. This situation sheds light on a more serious problem — the absence of political discourse in the architectural agenda in Belarus, which leads to the fact that architects, having limited leverage before 2020, from 2022 onwards, have been deprived of it almost completely.
Such a position does not bode well for the future of architecture and Belarusian society as a whole. Nevertheless, the field for action is wide enough even in such a difficult situation. The representatives of the architectural community are not only able to act but to act proactively, critically considering the rules established by the repressive state. An active political position will help architects find an opportunity for themselves, and it may happen for Belarusian society.
First, I will describe the reasons and consequences of the absence of politics in the field of architecture in Belarus. Second, I will comment on the situation in a global context, which overlaps with one in Belarus. Next, you will see the analysis of the relationships between architecture aimed at empowering people and politics in a condition of social conflict. In the end, defining the architectural practice for the existing Belarusian context, I will introduce you to the concept of political participation through architectural dissidence, supporting it with several cases.
Passive architectural subjects: evasion and acceptance
Since 2020, participation in politics has become popular among the people in Belarus, at least until the open protest was halted by state repression. Despite the popularity among the general public and active involvement of civil society, politics has hardly penetrated the sphere of architecture: it was almost never discussed before or during the social mobilisation, nor is it discussed now, after the cataclysms in the region. One can understand why political topics are avoided in an authoritarian state during heightened repression. Nevertheless, avoiding such issues in a situation of political crisis means ignoring reality. In my opinion, by refusing to perceive politics directly, in most cases, architects perceive it anyway, whether through the economic or professional lens.
Seeing politics through the economic lens, architects perceive themselves primarily as economic subjects, therefore, their behaviour does not differ from that in other business areas. The logic here is the following: a political crisis provokes an economic one, which leads to a decrease in the number of projects, commissions and clients. The reactions might be: looking for a job and clients in other countries, moving to another profession or getting an education abroad. While in some cases, particular individuals and companies benefit from it, the sphere does not change much.
When referring to professional boundaries, architects prefer to ignore politics altogether, leaving all political processes to politicians and activists. The principal motive here is to preserve professional competencies that would be difficult to apply elsewhere. In spite of being oriented toward a ‘problematic context,’ in many cases, it leaves the status quo untouched and presupposes some concessions that may ignore more complex ethical questions: what level of collaboration is accepted? Is it effective to work in state institutions? Is it ethical to participate in projects with Russian investment after the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine? The sphere continues to exist, although it lacks the space for reflective thinking and thus, it exists reactively, uncritically adjusting to the external conditions.
To summarise, these two opposite positions, those of evasion and acceptance, are the passive ones. They are passive regarding the positive change in the sphere and engagement in socio-political life. However, it would be at least strange to blame architects for such passivity, as there are plenty of external reasons. Partially it comes from the specificity of politics in Belarus and partially — from the relationship between architecture and politics in general.
Politics and architecture in Belarus
Politics was not a part of architectural discourse in Belarus even before 2020, unlike, for example, the spheres of economy or art, which quickly reacted to any political changes. The state monopoly on education and the high level of ideologization of the entire education system did not allow politics to appear in it. Although public discussions touched on political topics, the conclusions remain inapplicable in the current situation. The fact that politics is excluded from the field of architecture can be seen as well through the absence of an institute of architectural criticism and the lack of its representation in general, the focus on purely professional problems in discussions, and relatively high degree of involvement of local architects in projects with a negative reputation.
The institution of architectural criticism does not exist in Belarus as such, non-institutional criticism is limited to a small set of articles in the media. While criticism behind the scenes remains largely toothless: in most cases, architects see the main problem in an outdated approach or the general malpractice of governmental institutions. If seen from a political perspective, the absence of the institution of criticism and the outdated image of the governmental institutions may be the factors that benefit the state. It may happen that what the architects see as malpractice, in reality, turns out to be ‘structured confusion,’ primarily beneficial to the state.
When politics is prohibited and architecture is isolated from other disciplines, the major part of public and semi-public discussions is reduced to intra-professional issues. This isolation leads to the mere observation of the problems. It does not allow architects to see their status in society critically. In some cases, architecture is an instrument for legitimation of the projects contributing to the deterioration of the urban environment.
The lack of space for discussing politics does not make politics disappear, and the ignorance of such topics is fraught with negative consequences for the future of architecture in Belarus. By incorporating the political discourse into the architectural one, architects will be able to see the problems inside the sphere differently and find their place in the current situation to create the conditions for taking an active position in both the profession and society.
Architecture without politics: not unique to Belarus
With few exceptions, politics is not a part of architectural discourse in other countries today either. As Charlesworth notes, although architects as individuals are concerned with the problems of social and economic justice, the architectural profession has moved away from an interest in resolving social conflicts and even such basic problems as homelessness or the degradation of the quality of the urban environment. In accordance with a report by Carnegie Fund in 1996, only 22 percent of architecture students chose the discipline because they wanted to improve the community [1: 44, 47].
Till and Schneider see the problem of depoliticisation in the understanding of architectural practice purely as an exchange of service when the range of action is limited to the design and the delivery of buildings as the subsequently commodifiable objects [2: 97]. At the same time, ‘many schools of design are still guided by current obsessions with technological determinism, aesthetic formalism and theoretical obfuscation’ [1: 47]. Finally, they declare: ‘to say that architecture is political is to state a truism; to say that architects tend to avoid politics is to assert a generality’ [3: 38].
If architecture as a part of the urban environment is associated with politics since political decisions affect architecture and the urban environment along with social and economic factors, but architecture as a profession and discipline, as Aureli notes, has always tended to be a-political. Le Corbusier’s famous question, ‘Architecture or revolution?’ illustrates it best, where the revolution is considered an absolute evil that can only be prevented by the orderly nature of modernist architecture [4]. Similar political promiscuity can be assigned to Charles Jencks, who blamed architects for the failures of modernism, but at the same time, abandoned social responsibility by reducing architecture to its communicative function [3: 38]. However, such a comprehension of architecture goes far beyond the XXth century.
The initial proposal of the cover of the book «Vers une architecture», written by Le Corbusier. 1922-1923
If we look at it from today’s perspective, it appears that Vitruvius, the very first known architectural theoretician, did not care much for his political position. ‘The Ten Books’ were written during the civil war that signified the transition from the Roman Republic to the Empire. Whereas the aim for writing it was the desire of soon-to-be emperor Augustus to pacify the population of the territories within his power. As a result, Aureli concludes that architectural discipline was originally invented and institutionalised to ‘depoliticize architecture as one of the fundamental embodiments of the political within the city.’ Thus ‘design replaces politics’ [4].
Politics without architecture
The search for the political inside architecture is сomplicated because political discourse excludes architecture from itself even today. As Yaneva notes, the nexus of politics and architecture can be explained from the perspective of the traditional foundational political theories, where architecture is seen only within its relation to ideology, state, government, nation or policies. It becomes coupled with a perception that ‘politics is made by powerful men who act and institutions who decide on political matters, while architecture is a passive cold material world of buildings and infrastructures; a subject of decisions’ [5: 29]. Hence, architecture is treated as ‘representation of power,’ ‘expressed aspirations of a society’ or ‘arena for political struggles’.
Politics is understood as a separate field of activity, ‘it is outside of architecture’s remit and far from the architectural objects and processes’ [5: 5]. Such a view does not allow architects to be political agents, even if they want to. Architects always have to wait for a decision from above and to get involved only when all the major decisions have been made. ‘On the one side we place power, political shifts and domination, while on the other architectural form, styles and architects’ [5: 15]. Yaneva states that such a dualist view on architecture and politics ‘has an impact both on our imaginations and on our understanding of architectural production’ [5: 30]. Not only does this make it difficult to disentangle the ties between the spheres, but, more importantly, it constrains architects from participating in political processes.
This traditional understanding of politics firmly fixes architects’ role in society. Subsequently, it does not allow them to participate in its life more openly and critically question their own position. It seems there is already a default consensus with architects about the kinds and ways of their participation. But what happens when there is no general agreement or possibility for a consensus with the state in a traditional sense? After all, what can we rely on in politics when there are no traditional political institutions or specific political programmes?
Politics against police
Jacque Ranciere, a participant of May 68, a contemporary philosopher and an advocate of radical democracy, questions the traditional understanding of politics. What we usually call politics, namely the assignment of roles and places for subjects in society which finds itself in political programmes, state institutions or elections, he calls the police, or police order. Politics for him is the opposite: the subject’s intervention in this existing police order, an attempt to exceed a once-given distribution of roles. Though politics is always ephemeral, and the maximum we can get from political action is a better configuration of the police order, which is supposed to allow considerably more space for subjects’ actions [6].
Ranciere’s view on politics seems appropriate in the Belarusian situation, where the existing police order belongs to antidemocratic forces while the pro-democratic ones are far from legitimising their own. As if to confirm this thought, but referencing a global context, Yaneva writes: ‘At the time marked by the displacement of politics, the crisis of legitimation of party-based and national politics, to accept that buildings and architectural projects can miraculously legitimize or embody power, is a form of anachronism; to assume that the simple participation of users in design is sufficient for democratic design is to indulge into facile politization’ [5: 5].
Then the major problem of architecture lies in that it has always, or almost always, been on the side of the ‘police,’ and there are plenty of examples to mention: Bentham’s panopticon or Hausmann’s ordering of the streets of XIXth century Paris, or the CCTV building, designed by OMA, all the examples are united by the fact that they are based on a consensus with a state.
However, the understanding of politics in terms of resistance to the police order questions the traditional architectural theory and practice. As Bobic and Haghighi
tell us: ‘To understand the nexus between politics and space, architecture and the urban have to be redefined. Without this reformulation, we argue, it is impossible to understand the political role of architecture and urban space, whether oppressive, affirming, neutral or liberational’ [7: 4].
Architecture in the name of others
Before trying to define ‘liberational’ architecture, it is worth figuring out what the process of architectural production looks like. Besides the already mentioned product of the activity and profession, it includes essential elements such as expertise (preceding the profession) and practice (needed for creating the product). Traditionally it is considered that the architect-expert endowed with knowledge initiates this process and entirely controls it: he (and in most cases, it is ‘he’) defines the content of the profession, which determines possible types of practice, which in turn define the type of product; the latter comes back to the expert for evaluation [8: 154].
Scheme 1. The traditional understanding of the process of architectural production (according to Till). The expert initiates the process and controls the quality of the product. Social, economic and ecological factors and the subsequent occupation of the products (buildings) are overlooked.
Alas, such a linear process of architectural production can only be described by an architect trying to preserve at least some autonomy in an ever-changing world. Unpredictable social and political realities force architects to rely on the unshakable foundations of their activity, which in most cases are reduced to the design of buildings. According to Till, a major issue of such an understanding is the closeness of the system [8: 155]. Along with political factors, it excludes other people, non-professionals, from the process of architectural (or, if to see it wider, spacial) production, while architecture is a profession highly dependent on external factors.
When traditional foundations of politics exclude architects as professionals from political processes, traditional foundations of architecture exclude other people, potential political actors, from architectural discourse and the process of architectural production in general. As a result, it leads to a political intractability when architects are busy with polishing Vitruvius’ triad — utility, strength, and beauty (today it is function, tectonics and aesthetics) and citizens are beating against the walls of prisons and polling stations, not considering space and architecture as an object of their political influence.
It may happen that instead of dreaming about the invitation from politicians to demolish their pedestal, architects will start destroying their own by disclosing the imperfections of its structure to others. Rather than paying that much attention to architectural expertise and profession, Till suggests focusing on the spacial (not necessarily architectural!) practice as a first place of meeting reality in the usually linear process of architectural production. In such a case, the practice will become a direct response to a social, political or ecological situation, not a simple application of the learned skills or theoretical principles. The widely defined practice will determine the expertise, while the product will appear as a compromise between the practice and its possible usage in the future. Expertise still remains an essential element because theoretical discourse is needed to invent new practices. When occupying such a position, an architect can become a ‘contributor to the creation of empowering spatial, and hence social, relationships in the name of others’ [8: 178].
Scheme 2. The alternative version of the process of architectural production: the process starts with practice; social and political factors are considered source data which forms the practice. The product's future usage is considered at the initial stage. The profession and the product are not defined at the beginning.
The new scheme proposed by Till allows one to understand architecture less consensually, focusing not on the free market (which usually defines the product) or the state (which usually defines professional norms) but on the real needs of people and their social and political conditions. However, what can be said about social relations that empower others when the power of the majority of the population is melting day after day? To respond to the inquiries of Belarusian society, it is necessary to detail the conditions in which the society has to exist today. It will help politically motivated architects understand what kind of practices are required.
Architecture and the potential of dissidence
The continuation of the political crisis and increasing repression, indirect participation in the ongoing war in Ukraine and the threat to the independence of Belarus from Russia contextualise the country today. When political changes are delayed and the authoritarian regime confidently ‘falls back to the side of totalitarianism,’ it becomes crucial to ask what forms of political participation we have at the moment. A similar question remains thorny for a global world where the main threats are the neoliberal economy and global warming.
Inez Weizman, an architecture researcher, sees great potential in the concept of dissidence: she proposes to take this definition from the context of the Eastern Bloc countries of the 60s - 70s and place it into today’s global context in architecture [9: 2]. It appears that dissidence as a kind of disagreement with totalising forces may be similarly beneficial for both the situation of today’s capitalism and the authoritarian regime of the Belarusian type. Besides that, architectural dissidence includes ‘paradox’ (the original title of the book edited by Weizman is ‘Architecture and the paradox of dissidence’) — to take a position against it has to hold a position of cooperation. This paradox is where architecture, usually dependent and consensual, finds its beneficial status.
What if architecture, seemingly considered a part of the system, is actually a Trojan horse that has been staying for a long time at the gates of politicians? When architects are the dissidents hiding inside and waiting for the best momentum in their own ‘revolution of patience’? However, in contrast with revolutionaries or activists, as natural dissidents, they do not aim to gain power or reform the system. Their task is constantly questioning its foundations and professional, cultural and political norms [9: 4]. Placed in such a context, seemingly politically innocent architecture can be seen at least as one of the few places which are ‘unblemished’ by political mobilisation. At most, it is a niche with a huge potential for being fulfilled with mobilisation sense for both the architects and others.
Thus, architectural practice in Belarus, when defined in the conditions of political crisis — first and foremost — is a dissident practice. Architectural dissidence opens up a broad field for participation, starting from open resistance and finishing with quiet, barely visible, almost conforming forms of disobedience. There are a few cases where the dissonance became an identifiable quality of architecture.
Dissident practice in action
Some authors suggest sets of roles for architects who have to work in conditions of conflict. There are historians, lawyers, writers, teachers, politicians, etc. [1: 37; 10: 24]. However, in this article, I am not trying to argue for the importance of the profession of architecture with a fixed set of ethically righteous forms of its realisation. What matters most is to encourage the architects to create new practices that will be able to respond to circumstances where the profession seems powerless. I will describe only three cases of dissident practice that happened in different contexts and periods. The descriptions will contain familiar characteristics while leaving some space for imagination.
Školka
The idea of Školka (czech. - kindergarten), an architectural studio-incubator, appeared at the time when the Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. Being a department of SIAL (Liberec Association of Engineers and Architects), it successfully existed in the period of ‘normalisation’ until 1982, when the democratic achievements of the Prague Spring had been completely cancelled. Situated on the periphery of Liberec, far from the parental state institute Stavproject, the studio offered the young architects and their tutors a creative space for ‘‘a certain freedom for ideas and work, <...> and most importantly allowing play.’ [9: 65] It contrasted with other architectural institutions of the time, which were busy with developing schemes of prefabricated panel buildings.
Despite the fact that many participants of Školka were dissidents in a traditional sense, the practice was created not as a direct response to the political events but as a result of dissatisfaction with the existing system of architectural production. Miroslav Masak, the initiator of the studio, in his programme was pointing out the dissatisfaction with the conditions and results of the activity of architects: ‘in the swirl of instant solutions architects lose their ability for creative work. They are not responsible for what and why they are producing, but only for how they do it.’ [9: 65] In response to these conditions, they created an architecture studio with a unique approach to the organisation of work and an atmosphere where a play was ‘a condition of creation’. [9: 65]
The young students and their tutors were organising internal competitions while critically responding to a standard logic of official guidelines. These competitions, on the one hand, were a space for open discussion of problems and solutions, on the other — they allowed the architects to participate in state competitions, which provided an alibi for receiving financial support from the local Architect’s Union. Some of the studio's projects had been realised, although, more importantly, their competition projects became known in Czechoslovakia and outside the country.
The Liberec downtown project. Supposedly the 1970s. Source.
The very emergence of the initiative indicates that the founders were familiar with the main principles of functioning of the political system in general. The fact of its 14-year existence in the period of repression shows the skillfulness of the participants in defending their interests through critical rewriting of the studio programme in compliance with the official rhetoric of the state. Though the studio practice did not question the political system directly, the horizontal structure of the enthusiastic friends with shared values and logic allowed not only to resist the dominant model of the architectural practice of design institutes, but also to create a parallel public sphere, which was used as a space for reflection.
Tallinn School
Tallinn school is a title given to a group of architects, artists and designers that emerged in Estonian SSR in the beginning of the 70s. They were able to criticise the architectural norms and the conditions of the life of city dwellers through an exhibition organised by the Architects’ Union. This exhibition was a precedent that later opened an opportunity to make changes at the level of the state structure. The actions of the group represent a type of dissident practice that appeared thanks to and in spite of the means provided by the state institutes.
The group was interested in the social role of architecture and was open to cooperation with other cultural spheres. At times of technological optimism, a group representative, Leonard Lapin, saw the potential not in that architecture can be produced by machine but in architecture performing as a machine responding to the user's requests. For another participant, Harry Shein, architecture was ‘on the spectrum of designing single objects, to the design of human interaction ‘ [9: 27]. Moreover, in Soviet Estonia in 1972, he thought that architects should give up authority to the city residents to give them the right to participate in the creation of their surroundings: ‘We can survive without people’s architects, more important that people themselves could be architects’ [9: 27].
Organised by the youth section of the Architects’ Union of Estonian SSR, ‘Architecture Exhibition 78’ became a platform for dialogue about architecture as a part of the cultural sphere and a space to critique mass construction. The criticism was achieved through irony and did not provide answers to the raised questions. The exhibition displeased the older generation of architects. A year later, the events of the exhibition made it possible to remove the head of the stagnating Architects' Union, Martin Port, who held the office for 24 years in a row. Although another functionary took his place, the participants of the group took the opportunity and obtained some positions in the institution.
Leonhard Lapin. ‘The City of the Living – The City of the Dead.’ 1978. An ironic commentary on monofunctional housing districts. In the centre of the courtyard, he placed a cemetery performing at the same time as a children’s playground: ‘in this way, as one exhibition review mockingly put it, people would take better care of the area and parents would not allow their children to vandalise its equipment’ [9: 23]. The central obelisk commemorates the head of the Architects’ Union. Source.
The dissidence manifested itself in two formats: 1) the exhibition, where architects were able to create an alternative discourse inside the sphere; 2) the actions of the representatives of the group who became political actors ‘in their use of the event to stage an open dialogue [9: 29].’ Though the practices did not extend the limits of the profession, the group's activity created a new public that continued to discuss similar topics in the circles of writers and other intellectuals. In this case, due to the group's well-coordinated actions, the resources provided by the state caused changes in the system itself.
Forensic Architecture
Forensic Architecture is a research agency created by architects who wanted to investigate cases of human rights violations. The practice of the agency turns the process of architectural production inside out. Being founded in 2010 by a Palestinian born in Israel, it has been collecting evidence for numerous facts of state violence. In this sense, they call themselves ‘contr-criminalists’ [11] because they often have to ‘investigate the investigators’ [11], particularly when the latter commit crimes while performing their duties.
Despite the aim of the FA to find the truth, they do not want to think of themselves as objective scientists, at least because they always take the victim's side in any investigation. According to FA, people and communities initiate the process of investigation while the team formed by a broad scope of specialists, among them architects, artists, cinematographers, lawyers and journalists, help to organise information in the form of situated (spacial) evidence and to present it in the court. Most importantly, they focus on empowering the communities that seek political change and find themselves in confrontation. Thus they put the needs of people at the centre of the process of, in this case, not architectural but forensic production.
They present the results of their work in court or, if they do not have such an opportunity, in art exhibitions that allow them to show the cases to a broad public. Comparing the institutions, the founder Eyal Weizman calls the process of witness protection in the court a kind of curatorship, where the images, sounds and their combination serve as rhetoric methods. Aesthetics plays a significant role in the process because it is seen as a means for building an argument, finding out ‘a trace on the surface’, not delivering the beauty.
FA Investigation. By using visual open-source analysis and dynamic simulations, they measured the concentration of tear gas in the air and on the ground to estimate the level of health risks for the peaceful protest participants posed by Chilean security forces on 20 December 2019.
FA belongs to an open type of dissidence. It finds itself in opposition to all the states, all the police in both senses as the controlling institution and as the process of political avoidance. This practice makes barely recognisable voices heard in the whole world. It is essential to point out the context in which the practice was formed: despite the enthusiasm and passion for architecture and the unextinguished desire to design things, Weizman tells about the obligations imposed by ‘particular historical conjuncture of being born in Israel’ in 1970:
«I think it would have been unethical to do [the design]. <...> I think that what we claim is that architecture includes also what we do. We do not say ‘replace it’, we do not say ‘all architects should do this’, but we should say now that architecture is slightly bigger than what it was. And it enables young architects… and should give them agency, it should give them motivation to go out there and to understand that they can be public intellectuals and they can be political agents or activists. And that the toolbox what they have in their laptops, those software, those things that we studied in almost every architectural school in the world are very very powerful tools, politically, if you know how to use them. And it could allow you to intervene in very difficult situations» [11].
After dissidence
Without a doubt, the list of dissident architectural practices could go on: there is Algirdas Kaušpėdas’ tactical refusal of practising architecture in favour of direct participation in the political events in Lithuania at the end of the 80s; there is a tough life of Vilanova Artigas, who decided to suffer from the conditions of a dictatorship in Mexico to resist a colonial politics of the USA in 60s [9: 74]; there is an activity of Marta Staņa in Soviet Latvia; the performative practice of Tallinn’s Group T at the end of the 80s. It is worth mentioning Bogdan Bogdanović in former Yugoslavia, who had to practise architecture through the design of monumental sculptures; there is the Ukrainian ‘The Center for Spatial Technologies,’ busy collecting evidence of the crimes committed by Russian military forces. The mere existence of such practices proves the readiness of architects to react actively to difficult political conditions they find themselves in.
Certainly, such global problems as the ecological crisis and the neoliberal economy do not make the Belarusian situation any less difficult. However, it turns out that politically the contrast with a global world is not that striking - according to the report of Varieties of Democracy Institute in 2022, the level of democracy for the average dweller of the planet downgraded to the one in 1986. It may happen so that the societies that have to experience political crises and reinvent themselves politically can plant new sprouts in such a drastically depoliticizing field. If the Eastern Europe dissidents ended up in a similar situation with the collapse of the Soviet totalitarian regime, what can be freed by today’s architectural dissidence? It could be that by solving current issues in the Belarusian context, we will see the global problems on the horizon or at least use the time to exercise our attentiveness to political processes.
Social conflicts, wars and ecological catastrophes kill thousands or ruin their lives. All these situations raise difficult questions for architects. The situation in Belarus, where there are selective killings, continuing repressions and the constantly growing number of political prisoners, makes the question even harder for architects — at least the buildings stand firm. In the end, the question may sound as the following: when the free architecture studio emerged in Czechoslovakia in times of the intensification of repressions, and the practice of Forensic Architecture amalgamating into a separate profession appeared from the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, what spacial practices could emerge as a response to the Belarusian situation? Probably, this is the question that can help all of us, the participants of multiple conflicts, find new senses for a vigorous activity for ourselves and later pass them on to others.
Notes
Esther Charlesworth. Architects without frontiers: War, Reconstruction and Design Responsibility. London: Architectural Press, 2006.
Tatiana Schneider, Jeremy Till. Beyond Discourse. Footprint Issue # 4: Agency in Architecture: Reframing Criticality in Theory and Practice, 2009.
Nishat A., Schneider T., Till J. Spatial Agency. Other Ways of Doing Architecture. Routledge, 2011.
Pier Vittorio Aureli. Can Architecture be Political? Discussion ‘The Architecture Exchange – How is Architecture Political?’. AA School of Architecture, 2014. [1:01:44] Link
Albena Yaneva. Five Ways to Make Architecture Political: An Introduction to the Politics of Design Practice. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
Gabriel Rockhill, «Rancière and His Legacy: Contributions and Limitations». Critical Theory Workshop, 2019. Link
Nikolina Bobic, Farzaneh Haghighi. The Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics, Volume I: Violence, Spectacle and Data. Routledge, 2023
Jeremy Till. Architecture Depends. The MIT Press, 2009.
Ines Weizman. Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence. Routledge, 2014.
Wilhelmus Elskamp. History Thesis: Architecture Through Conflict. TU Delft, 2021.
Eyal Weizman. Forensic Architecture is Looking at the Past to Transform the Future. Interview. Louisiana Channel, 2022. Link
Viktorija Šiaulytė, Marija Drėmaitė. Maištaujantis Oportunizmas / Subversive Opportunism. Vilnius University, Architecture Fund, 2014.Link
