“How can you write about buildings, about houses, about thoughtful plans and neat details while cities are being levelled in real time?”, wrote in March 2024 Financial Times architecture critic Edwin Heathcote. He was among the very few from the field who publicly expressed their horror at the sight of the complete destruction of urban tissue unfolding in Gaza. His article appeared in the popular online architecture magazine Dezeen and comments were turned off on this story “due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter”.
Urbicide is a sensitive subject indeed, no less telling about the failures of society than genocide. Killing a city affects us all – slowly or drastically degrading the urban environment, destroying communities and faith in humanity, but also the sheer meaning of our profession. Whether in Bakhmut or Gaza, in Beirut or Sarajevo, in Belfast or the Bronx in the 1970s – those landscapes of ruins and cities of dust are supposed to make architecture react and change. But have they?
Historian, theorist, and architecture critic, Aneta Vasileva (Ph.D., M.Arch.) specializes in postwar architecture and preservation of architectural heritage and teaches at the History and Theory of Architecture Department of UACEG Sofia. She is co-founder of WhAT Association, GRADOSCOPE and New Architectural Heritage Foundation and is a member of ICOMOS Bulgaria, DOCOMOMO Bulgaria and the International Scientific Committee Education & Training of DOCOMOMO International. Her latest book, Kicked a Building Lately?* Architecture Criticism After the Digital Revolution, appeared in 2024 (Sofia: Queen Mab).