Ed Wall: Architecture & war.

About this episode

The episode features a discussion with Ed Wall about the intersection of architecture and warfare, exploring themes from his book on the subject.

With warfare seemingly creeping up on us – because governments keep starting them – it seemed like a good idea to speak to Ed Wall, Professor of Cities and Landscapes at the University of Greenwich, about his book Architecture for Warfare: How Corporations Profit from Destruction and Reconstruction , published by Jovis in December last year. It’s difficult to know what to say about this, beyond what Professor Wall describes in the book: there is a seam of architectural practice which makes the infrastructure of war and reconstruction, and makes a good deal of good business whilst doing it. Isn’t it better, one might ask, that architects, with their designerly imaginations, their theories and lovely drafting skills, and their spatial-technical and ecological competencies, are involved in this sort of stuff? At least then it’ll have passive ventilation . Jeremy Bentham – not an architect – drew the panopticon in the Eighteenth Century and in so doing arguably more-or-less defined the modernist city. The great Alfred - Waterhouse designed Strangeways in the 19th, and that’s pretty lit. Then there was Speer, of course, in the Twentieth. So the connection isn’t new. It still feels…

People in this episode

Host: Ambrose Gillick

Guest: Ed Wall

Topics covered

• architecture
• war
• urban reconstruction
• design ethics
• corporate profit

Keywords

• architecture
• warfare
• urban design
• reconstruction
• corporate ethics

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Greenwich

Books & works: Architecture for Warfare: How Corporations Profit from Destruction and Reconstruction

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