Transition as Condition _ In Time of War _ Reconstruction as Strategy and Practice

Urban design and architecture operate not only under conditions of transition and persistent instability, but increasingly also under the dynamics of crisis. Violent disruption and catastrophic events — acts of war and environmental disasters caused by anthropogenic climate change — are increasingly frequent and ubiquitous conditions of urbanization. These events can no longer be considered as isolated or exceptional, but rather as constitutive of global urbanization processes and practices. Construction in this context is more and more a continuous process of reconstruction. These dynamics, their impact on the built environment and significance for urban design and planning practices, are the central concerns of the course.

In Time of War frames the research in terms of the agency of the design and planning disciplines in the context of war and puts forward the proposition that in time of war those disciplines and the project of reconstruction itself must adopt the stratagems of war — tactics, strategy, and practice — if they are to achieve their objectives. In the course, we will engage that proposition and explore a range of critical frameworks and research methodologies for understanding the dynamics of reconstruction theoretically, historically, and spatially across scales.

The starting point for that investigation is the current war in Ukraine. Russian aggression against Ukraine began in 2014 with the occupation and annexation of Crimea; it escalated with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and is now in its third year, with no end in sight. Yet, in Ukraine reconstruction is already underway, even as the destruction continues. These conditions and the practices of reconstruction that are emerging in that context, provide an initial framework for examining critical concepts and relationships between transition & crisis, strategy & practice, war & postwar, cold war & warming war.

But the investigation extends beyond that context. In the course we will interrogate those concepts and relationships as epistemological categories, examine the paradigms on which they are based, and work to develop critical methods and visual techniques for site-based investigation of conditions and interventions that are dynamic, unstable, and continuously transforming. We will examine reconstruction within the discourses of planning and development, peacemaking and reconciliation, international politics, urban and architectural history. We will engage with issues of sustainability and resilience, and the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. The investigation is historical, theoretical and interdisciplinary; it involves research on a broad range of reconstruction programs and projects in the context of wars and natural disasters from the early 20th century to today.