Destruction by Design: military strategy as urban planning

LSE Cities Programme James Stirling Memorial Lecture on the City

Eyal Weizman’s lecture presents his original research on the relationship between architectural and military planning, and considers the role of architects and urban planners in shaping military campaigns. Contemporary warfare is increasingly conducted within real as well as imaginary urban settings, through the destruction, construction, reorganization, and subversion of space. As such, the urban environment is understood by military strategists today not simply as the backdrop for conflict, but as a central element to be studied, manipulated, and created.

Eyal Weizman is an architect, writer, and curator whose work is motivated by a commitment to human rights at a time of increasingly fortified and militarized cities. His studies of violations of international humanitarian law through the use of architecture and planning were published in the report Land Grab, developed in collaboration with the human rights organization B'Tselem. Based on this research, he co-curated A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture, which was shown at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, in 2003, and co-edited the accompanying publication. Weizman is founding director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Conceived in homage to architect James Stirling, who believed that urban design is integral to the practice of architecture and a vital topic for public debate, the James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City competition was inaugurated in November 2003 as a unique forum for the advancement of new critical perspectives on the role of urban design and urban architecture in the development of cities worldwide. The CCA acquired the comprehensive James Stirling archive in November 2000, which comprises a vast collection of drawings, prints, photographs, and models covering Stirling’s production from 1948 to his death in 1992.

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