Two Deaths: A Reflection on Architecture, Carcerality, and Palestine
Keywords:
architecture
spatial politics
Palestine
settler colonialism
apartheid wall
ethical design
Abstract:
In this essay, architect-activist and Funambulist editor-in-chief Léopold Lambert reflects on the ways that the architectural profession can be, and historically has been, complicit in structural injustice. He ties together the seemingly unrelated deaths of two men, uncovering in the process how architecture consecrates, amplifies, or abets oppression, be it in the settler-colonial context of occupied Palestine, in the French criminal justice system, or in the historical framework of the transatlantic slave trade.
Author biography:
Léopold Lambert is a trained architect based in Paris and the editor-in-chief of The Funambulist, a bimonthly print and online magazine dedicated to the politics of space and bodies. He is the author of four books, including Weaponized Architecture: The Impossibility of Innocence (Barcelona: dpr-Barcelona, 2012), La politique du bulldozer: La ruine palestinienne comme projet israélien (Paris: Éditions B2, 2016), and Etats d’urgence: Une histoire spatiale du continuum colonial français (Toulouse: Premiers Matins de Novembre, 2021).
