The Architectural Flaw
Book Chapter 2014

My earlier research conducted between 1999-2005 on the practices of reconstructing the destroyed city focused on three sites in the German cities of Berlin and Dresden that expressed varying relationships connecting history and the rebuilding of their urban spaces. The study carried out 65 years after these sites destruction during the allied air war on Germany in WW2 (1943-45) detailed the complex issues surrounding destruction, reconstruction and history. The research, writing and the accompanying three documentary films covering the three sites (Palast der Republik, Karl Marx Allee Berlin and Frauenkirche Dresden), brought together my understanding of how reconstructing destroyed urban environments reform the history of the city. My belief at the time was that the practices of reconstructing destroyed sites, ensures the erasure of the destructive event to “make history go.”

L. van Schaik, S. Ware, C. Fudge, & G. London (Eds.), The Practice of Spatial Thinking: Differential Processes (pp. 41-50). Melbourne: onepointsix.