Rupturing Architecture

Reviews / Votes

This is an excellent book, which should be required reading for all of us trying to understand the extended violence and trauma that Iraqi society was subject to after 2003. Murrani develops a highly ambitious and innovative theoretic framework that allows her to examine the complex relationship between spatial trauma and collective societal memory. She develops the concept of 'deep mapping' as a vehicle to allow ordinary Iraqis to understand and explain their own extended trauma, driven by authoritarian, invasion and then civil war. The result is a book full of humanity, which carefully gives Iraqis the space to deploy their own narrative about what happened to them over the twenty years since the invasion. The book deploys Iraq as a detailed and insightful case study of the 'spatial turn' in conflict studies and Middle East politics. * Toby Dodge, Professor of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK * A timely and poignant book, with haunting visuals. Murrani perceptively narrates the lived experiences of Iraqi people across refuge and displacement, capturing the affective and sensory infrastructures and materialities of violence, loss and trauma. She reinvents creative mapping, centered on memories and ruptured place-making. * Mona Harb, Professor of Urban Studies and Politics, American University of Beirut, Lebanon * Rupturing Architecture is a valuable contribution to the scholarship on conflict urbanism in the global south. The author provides a remarkable examination of the impact of conflict on the built environment in Iraq's war-torn landscapes. This work masterfully integrates a diverse range of a rich tapestry of spatial analysis and narratives to illuminate the adaptive practices of resilience amidst war and violence. * Gehan Selim, Hoffman Wood Chair of Architecture, University of Leeds, UK * Not only a remarkable academic contribution, it's a deeply humane one... In a world increasingly shaped by displacement, whether through conflict, climate, or economic inequality, Rupturing Architecture offers an essential vocabulary for understanding, documenting, and responding to the spatial practices of refuge. * Uniform November *