Architecture When the Time Comes

Tectonic

Architecture is uniquely poised—today, and perhaps as never before—to confront and contend with the most recalcitrant and pressingly critical issues of our time. Among them, war. Given its awesome and fearsome scale, and the belligerence of those who wage it, and the leveling destruction of places, and the ensuing and harrowing flight and displacement of people, and the depth of their trauma and suffering—given all of this, the urgency of architectural responses to the human and material plight that we witness daily, and that we suspect is unparalleled in history, cannot be understated. What also cannot be understated is the degree to which architectural responses to the crises of war must be undertaken with thoughtful dispatch and not with the hurried abandon and unrestraint typical of postwar reconstructive efforts. The project places in relief some of the imperatives of and directives for the reconstruction of architectural ecosystems destroyed by war. It is grounded in the premise that no one can responsibly approach and enter into questions and projects of post-war reconstruction without first pouring over the record—some of which is archaic and poised toward oblivion—of what historically defines a people and constitutes the conventions, forms, and legends to which they are dedicated. The paper assumes the need for attentive and sensitive responses to the deep-rooted psychological, social, cultural, and environmental needs, requirements, and conventions of people who have faced and who reel from the ultimate of existential threats. The paper also assumes the need for an equally attentive and sensitive response to the very material conditions of the locales that, prior to war, supported a people in complex and lively ways. For, despite their overwhelming ruin, these locales, along with the conventions of a people, hold the promise of healing and recovery. In short, it is both a material and a cultural tectonics that must be sought by architects—and sought precisely within existing material and cultural matrices—before committing to the awesome task and responsibility of reconstruction.