The region is also just an interesting lens through which to start asking questions about how we practice today, how we practice globally, how we move beyond these kinds of oppositions between local and global tradition and modernity. Welcome to Archonect Sessions 1-1. I'm Amelia, and this week I'm speaking with architects and dean of Columbia's GSAF, Amal Andraus. In the past few years at Columbia, Amal has been researching how the so-called Arab city is represented in the urban discourse, finding that was often reduced to simplified mythic fetishized models.
She has since published her findings alongside pieces by Bernard Quarry, Reynolds Martin, Isle Weissman, and others. In the Arab city, a book that she hopes will be an accessible introduction to the complex and storied reality of cities in the Arab world. The book comes out in June. So Amal, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
We last interviewed you in the fall of last year for our Dean's List series, and in particular in that series, we always like to ask how the relationship between practice and academia comes into play when you're in that position of leadership at a school of architecture. And in particular, asking about how the role of a practitioner can kind of influence or should influence the role of an academic when they're occupying both roles. And you had responded at that time about a year after you had been positioned at Columbia's Dean, that you felt that it wasn't so necessary or particularly significant that a Dean also be a practicking architect, but that being an architect who supports practice and discourse and kind of just holds those two things is not necessarily in opposition to one another is the more important thing. I was wondering now, after being at Columbia for a little bit longer and getting more invested, if you're in opinion on that or your thoughts on that had changed at all or particularly developed?
Yeah, it's a great question. I actually know I still feel very strongly that it's not the important aspect, it's not for Dean necessarily to be either a theoretician or a practitioner, but rather someone who supports both and very strongly and supports the kind of conversation between the two. I think there have been times where what happens in practice is really informed by what happens in academia in terms of discourse and exploration. And then at other times it has felt like what was happening in the quote unquote world out there was so much more radical and complex and that it kind of pushed what was happening in schools.
And so I think that dialogue is really critical. And now I see both happening at the same time where we are no longer just sort of in a moment of all in terms of questions of global practice or speed or all these things now have become for better for worse, a given. And so it's an interesting moment for schools at once to continue to engage those forms of practice, but also provide a space for some distance and reflection. And so I think the two are really necessary and kind of the sort of tensions and sort of the tensions and the exchanges are really both critical and productive.
And you of course were at Columbia prior to holding the Dean's ship and simultaneously throughout and continually you are still working with work AC and your partner there so I'm wondering if the course of your work at work AC has made any particular impact on your practice as a dean, whether there's any particular interplay there. Well, I like that you think I'm still at work AC on a regular basis. I have to I must confess the past two years have been really unbelievably intense in terms of the school and exciting in that sense but I'm making my way back. I think that you know as a speaker of just my own practice, you know we have always embraced kind of let's expect to work and research and kind of a certain level of freedom in what we engage with.
And so I think that I really cherish that. And so in that sense, I think that level of freedom is something that I very much want to continue to support at the school. It's definitely in the DNA of the school and it's something that I wanted to continue to kind of support and encourage while at the same time, you know, being quite embedded in the sort of urgent issues of our time. So the two sort of for me are not in contradiction and rather have to exist together or that the pleasure lies in their existence together.
And recently you have put out this book, The Arab City with Nora Akawi and Caitlin Blanchfield. And so this book in particular, how does that kind of fall into your interest in research as both a practitioner and a academic. So the book is really the result of a number of investigations. One is the studios that I led over three years on the question of architecture and representation in particular through the project of the embassy as a typology that sort of really highlights some of these questions.
And my seminar on Arab cities looking at contemporary architecture and urban production in the region, as well as situating that production within a longer history, you know, starting with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. And as a result of both Studio and seminar, we neuro and I, who neuralize the studio director and our man, organize this conference and it brought together our, you know, a wide range of scholars, architects, historians, artists, and as well as simply faculty from across campus from the school to look at these And so the conference resulted in the book. And I think that for me, the book operates at a number of level. One is, it's just the kind of convening that one can do to try to bring a number of voices together to open up new ways of understanding a context and a history.
I think it expands for me the kind of let's say architectural canon, you know, while, you know, the school has been engaged with the question of global practice and for some time now, I think that now we're kind of digging deeper where we're also engaging with the question of history and, you know, what histories do we teach? How do we teach? How do we expand the references that we use? So it's both kind of his project about expanding our references historically, as well as understanding the context, the contemporary context in a more complex way than sometimes it's portrayed.
After the city conference, we had a similar conference on called other desires, the African city, we have now an exhibition at the school on the Iraqi architecture. It opened on the day that we heard of Zaha's passing site was quite moving because Shadduji, of course, is one of those modernist architects that engaged to the questions of modernity and at the time of incredible artistic and intellectual boom in Baghdad, which was kind of Zaha's childhood anyway. So I think the school is also operating at that level of expanding our references really and kind of moving away from single Western narratives of, you know, architecture. At least the introduction for the book makes it very clear that one of the core issues that it kind of sees as why it's even existing, why you needed to make this book and run the research was that there was this unfair reductionist and often stereotypical representation of what quote unquote the Arab city meant or it was or is, and that part of the reason for the book existing was to not only help dispel that but also just inform the, as you said, the complexities of what it actually could mean or does mean to be an Arab city.
And I was wondering what are those kind of stereotypes or overly reductive models that you feel the book wanted to kind of dispel. I think that a number of things. One is I think the notion of Arab cities, obviously strategic, I mean, I think no city can be reduced to a kind of ethnic or racial qualification but I think that for me the notion of Arab is a way to kind of separate from the kind of Arab Islamic or the notion of Islamic cities and to claim a different history, which is the history of two centuries of the regions engagement with modernity and our progressive thoughts that starts with people like like the probably a Jabran who was the prophet and you know that there's a kind of long history of intellectual thought and also artistic of which someone like Shatirji was part of that it doesn't exist in the narrative that we hear today so when architects and especially international architects, you know, land in places like the golf, I think the, you know, there isn't that the references become very sort of reductive of metaphors and meanings about, you know, whether it's the desert or the oasis or Islamic pattern or you know there isn't the sense of the complexity and the tensions between the kind of old centers and the new centers, old centers being you know Beirut, Cairo, Marad, Damascus and the kind of shift of power that has occurred. So it's a call for, you know, I like to say, you know, Robert Venturi with complexity and contradiction, not cliches.
And so I think as architects, we can engage with much more complex set of narratives and historical references than the ones we have engaged in recent legislative, the last one or two decades. I also want to ask specifically about the cover design for the book. It's more or less a black type on a white cover however the text itself is put on these different faces of paper that are skewed at rotations of say like 90 degrees or say maybe 45 degrees, you have a square and then a 45 degree turn and another square on top of it's a smaller and that that includes the text of the title as well as the authors. I'm wondering if you can explain a little bit about the thought process behind that design and why exactly you decided to have a be that.
Yeah, so first I should say that this is really Neil Donnelly's design who did a fantastic graphic designer who the school have been collaborating with now on a number of books for our publication office Columbia Books on Architecture in the City. And so I think Neil, I don't want to over interpret what he tried to do but he wanted it to be at once sort of stark and simple but also I think actually engage in a complex way three dimensionality or the play between a dimension and the three dimension that you find at times in architecture and there's a sense of deconstructing and reconstructing our understanding of this question I think but you would have to ask him. Fair enough. Yeah.
You know, part of it is putting the, you know, taking the pieces apart and putting them together. Part of it is a kind of 2D, 3D play and that's how I read it. There's also references throughout the book but one of the core ones that surfaces is making historical references to the process in Beirut after the Civil War ended in 1990. The reconstruction of their downtown and issues dealing with European colonial urban heritage and post revolution cities and displacement and things that were still obviously are still issues currently.
I'm wondering now and when you were doing the research for the book, how did you try or did you try to situate that example in the current context of also perhaps comparing it to what's going on in Syria? It's an interesting question. I think that the story of the kind of reconstruction of the downtown is a sort of very telling story in terms of the future of the region where for me it ties to some of the questions we're exploring at the school around preservation, cultural heritage, the question of editing history or turning a city that is or part of a city that is all about the kind of the city that is all about the kind of complexity that I think when I'm claiming the art city to be or what a number of authors in the book claim it to be much more complex, much more layered, incredibly multi-ethnic, multi-religious hubs of cosmopolitanism and intellectual exchanges and turning that density, which was embodied by a density of very different periods of architecture and turning that into something that becomes a kind of city of icons where icons become religious icons. So suddenly the narrative is one of religious kind of a sort of coming together of the different religions, which the Beirut was never about that.
And so I think that was interesting about the process of reconstruction is how a kind of national identity gets transformed through destruction. And for me that ties to Palmyra, let's say, and the sort of attack on what in fact was at the time, if you think of Palmyra, very cosmopolitan, multi-layered hybrid architecture, it's not purely Roman. And I think that for it to become a site of attack and demolition is in a way somewhat similar where you're trying to change the narrative of the nation by editing out its architecture. I can't speak to the destruction right now in Syria because I think it's probably we don't know enough, although we have here at the schools, I'm not like Laura Kurgan, whose project conflict urbanism is looking at trying to already map out what's happening in Aleppo and trying to layer questions of climate change through the center of the center for spatial research.
So I don't know if that answers your question, but I think that what's interesting for me is how looking at architecture and the environment, both to understand a larger context, but you can also sort of see how the larger context is really embedded and embodied in architecture, let's say. Also, it seems to me significant that you were born in Beirut and that you would have a strong personal connection to that area in particular when considering these ideas, but I don't want to be resumptuous. So instead I'll rephrase that as a question. Is that something that came into play when you were editing a book?
Yes, yes, of course. I mean, I think I reveal and the introduction that it was partly a personal project, but beyond what's interesting is for me is how you use a personal to expand beyond. And I think that the region is also just an interesting lens through which to start asking questions about how we practice today, how we practice globally, how we move beyond these kinds of opposition between local and global tradition and modernity, which are all constructed and sometimes as architects, I think either were invited to fall back on these oppositions or we sort of use them with a little bit of a disingenuous earnestness. Let's say, and so it's both very much about the region, but it's also a lens through which we can ask larger questions.
And I think it's been really interesting to think about, okay, well, if you take those questions and then look at this question of quote unquote, you know, African cities, you know, we can start seeing some parallels and et cetera, et cetera. So it's also a kind of a frame, let's say, or a set of frames. And not to try to pull too much on your past experiences when before you even knew you were going to work on this kind of research, but you do also have experience living in Saudi Arabia and France, Canada, Netherlands, and now of course New York. And I would think that there might be an architectural discourse around what the Arab city might mean that would be very different depending on which vantage point within those different countries you're currently occupying.
Did that internationalism and that opportunity to be in those different countries that at times in your life play into your conception of how the Arab city would also be construed as a stereotype or as an idea? And so I think that's been interesting in terms of living in all or growing up in all these various places is of course that one always ends up feeling like you can be inside and outside at the same time. So understanding that there's no single perspective and you're always looking at something from different vantage points. So that's something that I, the kind of relational thinking that I think in fact we're trying to do at the school.
And I think if you speak to faculty and the diverse students here, that kind of relational thinking is very, very strong and that sense of diversity of perspectives. I would say that that is one result of probably having had a kind of political support for it and upbringing, but in terms of the actual constructions of the Arab city, I mean that goes back to people like Janet Abilohood who was a incredible scholar who traced these constructions across kind of French Orientalism and into American. So, you know, there is a kind of east to west, let's say, mirror that happens that is probably quite common, you know, or shared between the US and Europe in terms of looking at the so-called east. But in this age of the good, I think moving beyond these kinds of divisions and so that's part of the exploration as well.
So I also want to ask about your professional and perhaps relationship to Zaha Hadid as this idea of the Arab architect. There was an interview only in 2014 relatively recently where the Lays al-Hadid references a frustration at being called by journalists or just by any type of press material, so-called British architect because her practice is located and has always been located in London, even though she has always in her own description identified as Iraqi and Arab and how she felt that that should be, if needing another descriptor in front of just architect that that would be one of them or that would be the appropriate one, or Iraqi. And in a New York Times right after her death, you were quoted in a piece referencing that you also kind of understood that she was in that world and she was needing to have to kind of address that while also dealing with that kind of public misinterpretation or this public mismatching of always wanting to assign certain identifiers. I'm wondering though whether you feel her work as this incredibly prominent world-renowned architect is also necessarily part of the construction of the Arab city regardless of where she's building her work.
That's a very interesting question. First of all, I think Zaha did, you know, should be just an architect, for instance, I think there were a lot of, you know, she's a woman architect, she's a this architect, she's a that architect, and you know, you would never have had that with a man or someone who was a western architect. I mean, so a lot of the notion of the identifier I think is a problem, but given that you highlighted the fact that she was sensitive to that legacy, I think in her own words, I didn't know she said that, but I guess the question is like why should she be called the British architect. That was her comment.
I think that I don't know that she in particular contributed actually to the only thing I could say is that, you know, I think that it's a question in terms of let's say what the recent kind of architectural projects in, let's say, the new centers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, et cetera, have done to, I think there was maybe a missed opportunity or today we can look back at that era and say, you know, maybe there's an opportunity to be more complex about understanding the kind of powers that play in the region. I would just put it that way that the kind of hyperspectacle of these kind of emerging centers, while older ones are being completely destroyed, is a question that we can reflect on as architects today, I think would be my position. And so in conjunction with this text, the Arab city, for those who are interested, but would perhaps want some supplemental reading, what are some texts or some pieces that you might recommend those people reading either before heading to the Arab city or after, but just in conjunction with any pieces or reading in particular? No, I think that's what's great about the book is that it's very accessible.
And I think that all the essays are, you know, bring with them the right amount of references without overpowering. And so I would say that rather than reading before, I would say, you know, I would encourage people who are interested to read it as an introduction, let's say, and then, you know, use it as, again, a lens to explore further either some of the architects works or if you, some of the scholars such as Timothy Mitchell, who's done so much around these questions of representation and today, capitalization. And so I would use it more as a kind of intro text to open up a series of inquiries. Excellent.
Well, I'm all, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. I really love talking with you. Well, thanks so much. Thanks for listening to Archnax Sessions 1-1 with Amal Andros.
Donalavoynaw edits the podcast and Matt Scalinges composed our music. Myself and Bobbitt Sr. are the producers of 1-1. New episodes of 1-1 come out every Monday.
You can subscribe to us on iTunes and Google Play Music, and if you like the podcast, please consider leaving us a review. You can follow us on Twitter through adpark sessions or email us at Connects at Archnax.com. Thanks again for listening to 1-1.