Publications Repository - Gdańsk University of Technology

The main objective of the paper is to investigate how the conflict quality of landscape can be used as its asset and potential for creating new values. Like mediation between different overlapping archaeologies offers a basis for the perception of place in the chronology of time, the mediation between conflicted areas creates a capacious zone for enhancing the unique quality of landscape in its architectural, social, cultural and experiential dimensions. The paper explores formal and ideological possibilities of architecture exposed to political conflict conditions. A project titled "The Library of Two Cultures", located on the separation barrier dividing the conflicted Israelis and Palestinians, is used as an example. The concrete wall is artificially creating a "spatial void" around itself, acting as a repelling element to both of the conflicted nations. Being a materialized form of the conflict, the separation barrier becomes a spatial pretext for architecture to bring back to life this "dead zone", introducing new spatial and cultural qualities to the so far pejoratively perceived space. The design approach is to make architecture a participant in bringing the two nations closer using a step-by-step strategy. The design methodology is a diagram-based approach. The aim of the paper is to prove that the quality of landscape unfolds not by erasing the traces of conflicts, but by the constant process of their reconciliation in architectural, social and cultural terms.

Authors

• Małgorzata Zboińska