Violence Taking Place The Architecture of the Kosovo Conflict [Hardcover]

While the construction of architecture has a place in architectural discourse, its destruction, generally seen as incompatible with the very idea of culture, has been neglected in theoretical and historical discussion. Responding to this neglect, Herscher examines the case of the former Yugoslavia and in particular, Kosovo, where targeting architecture has been a prominent dimension of political violence. Rather than interpreting violence against architecture as a mere representation of deeper social, political, or ideological dynamics, Herscher reveals it to be a form of cultural production, irreducible to its contexts and formative of the identities and agencies that seemingly bear on it as causes. Focusing on the particular sites where violence is inflicted and where its subjects and objects are articulated, the book traces the intersection of violence and architecture from socialist modernization, through ethnic and nationalist conflict, to postwar reconstruction.Andrew Herscher is Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan. He investigated wartime destruction for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, was co-director of the Department of Culture of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, and founded the Kosovo Cultural Heritage Project. Overall, the bookViolence Taking Place: The Architecture of the Kosvo Conflictis a thoughtful and detailed study of the complex relationships between architecture and violence. It provides an insightful view of the specifics of the Kosvo conflict and the broader context needed in our attempts to understand the war in former Yugoslavia. Andrew Herscher's precise and meticulously researched book,Violence Taking Place, argues that not only is architectural destruction a symbol of violence but also that architecture forms a necessary context for violence to take place . . .Violence Taking Placerepresents the first architectural history of political violence in relS"