UNIFORM NOVEMBER

Architecture, Memory, and Peacebuilding

This theory has emerged through years of working in the shadow of violence—walking through ruins, speaking with survivors, tracing histories in fractured walls and contested ground. My practice has taken me from UNESCO-led reconstruction efforts in Mosul to local consultations in post-conflict MENA, where architecture is never just a building. It is a story, a battleground, a symbol of survival. It is a space in which memory settles—and sometimes erupts.

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These experiences have shaped my belief in the potential of architecture to support peace. They have also made clear how fragile and complex that process is.

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Despite criticism, liberal peacebuilding remains the dominant international framework for post-conflict recovery. These processes are increasingly focused not just on state institutions but on repairing fractured relationships between neighbours and communities—divided along lines of identity, history, and belief. As Maynard observed in 1997, in the aftermath of conflict we are left not only with destroyed infrastructure and ruined markets, but “indeterminable social and psychological damage.” As many societies today teeter between fragile peace and renewed violence, there is renewed urgency around the spaces and strategies that support healing.

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What we now call “New Wars” are frequently driven by identity-based grievances and symbolic power. Kalyvas (2001) characterises these conflicts as contests of ethnic belonging, while Hirst (2005) reminds us that war is not only about weapons or casualties, but about meaning. W ar is “symbolic,” he writes—it teaches people where they are, and why.

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And when the dust settles, symbols remain.

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Conflict and the Built Environment

The built environment is both a casualty and a witness of war. As a practitioner, I have walked through bombed-out buildings and reconstruction sites where bricks seem to carry both memory and emotion. As Murphy (2014) outlines, architecture can relate to violence in several ways:

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• As an instrument of violence—seen in segregation walls, prison blocks, or surveillance architecture.

• As a response to violence—in the improvisation of refugee camps, emergency clinics, or informal settlements.

• As a register of violence—where buildings, damaged or decayed, carry visible and psychic scars of conflict.

 

It is this final role—architecture as register—that has most influenced my own practice, and that opens a path toward architecture as a tool for peacebuilding.

 

Architecture as Peacebuilder

Because architecture is both visible and durable, it plays a powerful communicative role. It reflects values and beliefs, signals power and inclusion—or exclusion—and anchors collective memory. Driessen and Rapoport remind us that architecture shapes behaviour through non-verbal cues. It is therefore a potent, if underutilised, medium for peacebuilding.

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Working in post-conflict environments has shown me how built forms can help communities reconnect, reimagine, and remember. Abrams (1989) and Driessen (1995) argue that architecture supports the reconstruction of socio-cultural complexity. Schmitt et al. (2013) describe architecture as an invitation to bear witness, while Berger and Wong (2013) suggest that material remnants of conflict have become “new witnesses,” carrying memory across generations.

 

Memory, Trauma, and Contested Narratives

But memory is never neutral. It is layered, emotional, and often contested. Bevan (2016) notes that while architecture prompts memory, the meanings we assign to those spaces are shaped by human agency—and can shift with time. In my own work, I’ve witnessed how the same building can evoke pride, fear, grief, or defiance, depending on who is looking.

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Lowenthal (2015) highlights the intensely personal nature of memory, suggesting it is ultimately unsharable. And yet, despite—or perhaps because of—this complexity, societies continue to turn to built forms as sites of remembrance. As Macdonald (2009) observes, markers of the past increasingly populate our landscapes, becoming essential tools in the construction of heritage and collective identity.

The Western tradition, according to Forty and Küchler (1999), assumes that material objects can stand in for memory—prolonging it, preserving it. Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire speaks to the need for symbolic anchors in an era where “living memory” is fading.

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But as Holtorf (2001) cautions, memory is not always about truth. It can be manipulated, edited, even weaponised. Berger and Wong (2013) remind us that memory is often contested: “a triumph for one group can be a devastating loss for another.” The power to shape memory is the power to shape the future—a truth captured starkly in Orwell’s 1984: “Who controls the past... controls the future.”

 

Towards Peace with Integrity

Navigating memory in post-conflict contexts requires careful, empathic design. Brewer (2006) refers to the “unholy trinity” of memory, nationalism, and ethnic violence—but also to memory’s potential as a force for reconciliation. Through architectural work, I’ve seen how acknowledging trauma, honouring resilience, and creating space for contested narratives can begin to rebuild not just cities, but trust.

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Lowenthal reminds us that there is no single, absolute history. Yet that uncertainty is not a weakness—it’s an invitation to create spaces that are inclusive, responsive, and open-ended. When handled with care, architecture can contribute to new social contracts. It can help fractured communities find a sense of place, of ownership, of continuity.

As McDowell and Braniff (2014) argue, “peace processes must look to the past... and construct (or deconstruct) it in such a way as to allow society to move forward.”

 

Reuse, Revival, and Resilience

The adaptive reuse of architecture has become a particularly meaningful strategy in my practice. These projects allow communities to reclaim what was damaged—not to forget, but to reframe. From large-scale interventions like Berlin’s Reichstag, redesigned by Norman Foster as a beacon of postwar democracy, to smaller, evocative works like Bunker 599 in the Netherlands, these projects offer powerful models of transformation.

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They show that architecture is never just functional. It is symbolic. It is emotional. It holds the capacity to record, reflect, and rebuild.