Disappearing Territory

War destroys cities to the point of unrecognition, leaving people with trauma and loss. Everyone knows and sees the destructive capacities of war, but architecture and construction could also have destructive capacities; the so-called reconstruction of elements of architecture can be a war on its own. How can we distinguish revitalisation from spatial architectural solutions disguised as military tools? In this research project, political laws and maps produced by different actors are used to unpack the questions of camouflaged revitalisation within the scope of war and violence.

We live in a world now where we have reached the point where architecture and art seem to be subjective and serve society without following any political-ideological interests. But is it entirely true? Maps are essential tools, not only for architects but also in the hands of different political regimes. So, when we combine these two contexts, it becomes the architects’ responsibility not to fall into the trap of following certain political beliefs and portraying territories through a different lens than we would see in the news. What could be another way of making maps in the context of war? In this research, mapping becomes the tool for repairing the territory. It questions the news and media-produced political representation of maps and proposes another way of seeing them, rather than acknowledging maps as a 2D tool or scheme to give a piece of technical or political-strategic information. The two main double-sided maps are how I intervene with the problem of this contested region by bringing to the surface the context of the issue and suppressed voices and the spatial means used as political tools to change the territorial landscape of Artsakh. Mapping helped me reveal the architectural patterns used by the Azerbaijani government in this territory as a way of claiming it. Here, it became the way of distinguishing revitalisation from spatial architectural tools used to colonise territories. My project, in the end, is not a traditional technical architectural project but an architectural approach of differently seeing and representing one of the architects’ main tools, using it as a form to claim the rights of the people and urge for recognition and response to this destructive problem in different parts of the world.