Evolving world must reject war, look to fearless architects to keep building a better life

While builders try to organise and advance society in an orderly manner, war disrupts and sets back the effort, often in the name of building a better world
We should keep building for mutual growth and benefit whether in good times or bad as this is how we move forward

Dennis Lee

Published: 1:30am, 14 Jan 2023

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When Russia invaded Ukraine last February, who would have thought that the fighting would still be going on today? Working in a profession that is all about being constructive and providing comfort and safety, architects are inherently against war, which only brings destruction and despair. The stance disregards whether it is a just or unjust war.

As Ron Hunter – a character in the 1995 film Crimson Tide – said, “the true enemy is war itself”. Meanwhile, George Orwell wrote in 1984, “the essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour”.

Buildings, infrastructure, transport hubs and networks are such products. In developed societies, we build our worlds and living environments. As basic needs are fulfilled, buildings no longer provide just comfort and safety but also celebrate social stature, cultural identities and civic pride. We build monuments to commemorate glorious moments and iconic figures and extreme structures to express engineering prowess.

In times of war, architectural treasures, heritage sites and cultural landmarks are at the mercy of missiles and bombs. Destroying architecture symbolises the obliteration of a nation’s identity.

The relationship between war and architecture is akin to the polarity of entropy and order. While builders are attempting to organise and advance society in an orderly manner, war disrupts and sets back the effort, often in the name of sovereign identities and building a better world.

After the war broke out last year, numerous design firms and world-renowned architects stood in solidarity with Ukraine and suspended their projects in Russia regardless of their clients’ stance on the war. The decision might seem irrational, as their Russian clients might not support the invasion, but it was perhaps necessary to guard their image against negative publicity.

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An exception is the Austrian architect Wolf Prix, who has continued his projects in St. Petersburg and argued that he designed for the people and “architecture is art and art knows no sanctions or borders”. For him, architecture should open doors rather than close them, even in the most trying times.

National public sentiment on the conflicts between nations, kingdoms or social groups have changed over time. Historically, when a tribe or social group went to war, everyone united behind their leaders to defend against the enemy.

In the contemporary world, civilians have evolved. More than 6,700 Russian architects, designers, and urban planners signed an open letter to condemn the invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin might have brought forth a war in the name of his country’s sovereign identity but, in the digital age, civilians are empowered with free and easily accessible information to evaluate and make up their own minds about geopolitical events and their government’s actions.

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In the interconnected and interdependent modern world, it should be, as clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson points out, incomprehensible “how belief systems could be so important to people that they were willing to risk the destruction of the world to protect them”. In this world of individualism and self-sovereign identity, we are global citizens as much as we are a nation’s people. What would be our resolve?

Perhaps another fearless “architect” could shed some light on our situation. Consider the example of the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who is considered by many the architect of modern China.

When normalising diplomatic relations with Japan in 1978 and the Philippines in 1986, Deng raised the idea of leaving unresolved the territorial disputes over the Diaoyu and Nansha Islands – also known as the Senkaku and Spratly Islands.

One might think he did not come up with a solution to the matter but, in fact, preserving the status quo is a self-evident resolution. Deng’s wisdom was in allowing conflicting beliefs to hang in the balance, giving a chance for all sides to cool off and allowing time to work its magic to heal.

Deng followed up by saying the countries involved should “set aside dispute and pursue joint development”. With the progressive assimilation of different beliefs through collaboration and communication, Deng knew future generations who had not experienced the destruction of previous generations’ wars and harboured mutual hatred could possibly settle these disputes amicably.

From the emergence of homo sapiens some 300,000 years ago to the gathering of tribes and social groups, from defining sovereign boundaries after the Treaty of Westphalia to fighting wars for centuries, and from globalising the world in the post-Cold-War era to allowing free flows of information and the sharing of ideas in the modern era, humanity is on track to come full circle and recognise ourselves as one people.

We are incrementally dissolving abstract boundaries and beliefs that were historically created to separate us.

However, “one people” does not imply we are all the same, only that we are all part of humanity and share common interests. Whether we like it or not, the world is undergoing a widespread acceptance movement from race to gender, sexuality to self-identity, religious beliefs to body shapes and all the other factors that make each individual different. Yet, because we will always be different and differences will always bring disagreement, there are no solutions but only resolutions.

The fearless architects are right. We should keep building for mutual growth and benefit whether in times of war or when relationships are hanging by a thread. This is how we keep moving forward.

Dennis Lee is a Hong Kong-born, America-licensed architect with years of design experience in the US and China

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