1st Edition

Architecture and Armed Conflict The Politics of Destruction

Edited By JoAnne Mancini, Keith Bresnahan Copyright 2015
    232 Pages 100 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    232 Pages 100 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Architecture and Armed Conflict is the first multi-authored scholarly book to address this theme from a comparative, interdisciplinary perspective. By bringing together specialists from a range of relevant fields, and with knowledge of case studies across time and space, it provides the first synthetic body of research on the complex, multifaceted subject of architectural destruction in the context of conflict.

    The book addresses several specific research questions:

    • How has the destruction of buildings and landscapes figured in recent historical conflicts, and how have people and states responded to it?
    • How has the destruction of architecture been represented in different historical periods, and to what ends?
    • What are the relationships between the destruction of architecture and the destruction of art, particularly iconoclasm?
    • If architectural destruction is a salient feature of many armed conflicts, how does it feature in post-conflict environments?
    • What are the relationships between architectural destruction and processes of restoration, recreation or replacement?

    Considering multiple conflicts, multiple time periods, and multiple locations allows this international cohort of authors to provide an essential primer for this crucial topic.

    Part I: Architectural Destruction in Contemporary Conflicts  1. Architecture and Dwelling in the ‘War of Destruction’ in Vietnam Christina Schwenkel  2. The Case of Dubrovnik–UNESCO World Heritage Site Under Siege, 1991-1992 Darja Radović Mahečić  Part II: Representing and Replicating Architectural Destruction in Ancient, Early Modern, and Modern Contexts  3. ‘I burnt, razed (and) destroyed those cities’: The Assyrian Accounts of Deliberate Architectural Destruction Heather D. Baker  4. Remaking the Bastille: Architectural Destruction and Revolutionary Consciousness in France, 1789-94 Keith Bresnahan  5. Fine Arts under Fire: Life Magazine and the Display of Architectural Destruction Melissa Renn  Part III: Iconoclasm and Architectural Destruction  6. The Destruction of Cheap Cross, London (1643) Christine Stevenson  7. Iconoclasm and Resistance: Wayside Shrines in the Struggle for Lithuanian Independence Milda B. Richardson  8. Dublin and its Georgian Legacy: The Battle for Iconoclasm Ramona Usher  Part IV: Future Destruction: The Fate of Architecture in Post-Conflict Environments  9. Disciplining Delhi: The 1857 Uprising and Remodelling of the Urban Landscape Jyoti Pandey Sharma  10. Anything Goes: Architectural Destruction in Northern Ireland after ‘The Troubles’ Rita Harkin  Part V: From Destruction to Reconstruction  11. The Politics of Burgundian Romanesque: Destruction and Construction in Cluny and Mâcon during the Nineteenth Century Janet T. Marquardt  12. Making History: The Destruction and (Re)construction of Old Belgian Towns During and After the First World War Evert Vandeweghe  13. The Use of Ruins in Postwar German Church Reconstruction Kathleen James-Chakraborty  Index.

    Biography

    J. M. Mancini is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, National University of Ireland Maynooth.

    Keith Bresnahan is Assistant Professor of Design History and Theory at OCAD University in Toronto, Canada.

    "Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and general readers." -L. M. Bliss, San Diego State University, CHOICE Reviews, February 2015 

    "This volume brings a crucial new perspective to studies of architectural destruction by presenting it from an interdisciplinary and comparative viewpoint." – Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, Muna Guvenc, University of Pittsburgh