Architecture and Armed Conflict: The Politics of Destruction

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.