Architecture and war
Bunkers in the world
The incertitude of the actual times has given again attention in the worldwide scene to a specific form of architecture, military architecture and more specifically: the bunker. The bunker is a defensive military fortification designed to protect people and valued materials from falling bombs, artillery, or other attacks. They were used extensively in World War I, World War II, and the Cold War for weapons facilities, command and control centres, and storage facilities. And unfortunately, there is the doubt that the world might need to use them in the near future.
The concept of the bunker is clearly not new. There are a lot of countries that built them during the wars, or celebrities around the world owning them for their security. Even countries like Switzerland give us what many call, the ‘Swiss paradox’, being a neutral country, which hasn’t been attacked since Napoleon’s invasion in 1798 has built enough fallout shelters to protect the entire population. In between many examples, an interesting one is that of Albania.
The Ambiguity of the Albanian Bunker
The Albanian landscape, all across from its highlands to the coastal areas, has more than half of a century that is being dotted from these small monolithic structures. These bunkers came when the communist regime was ruling the country, and they were supposedly built to protect the people from a threat that never actually existed. The prevision was one bunker for every 4 inhabitants, which would have led in the construction of 750.000 concrete mushrooms. Except the fact that they reflect the paranoia of their ideator, they become a special case of a bunker also in the bigger arena of the defensive architecture in the world, since it was never really used. The bunker was more a metaphoric representation of the actuality of the country at the time: small, isolated and ready to protect its country from anyone with the naivety of their scale.
The Elephant in the Room
All the history of the past that the bunker as an archetype in the Albanian reality of nowadays carries on its shoulders, makers its future the more and more ambiguous. And simultaneously, their striking existence in hundred thousand of copies of each, in their static, rough and stagnant state cannot be ignored. It resides as a still painting on the landscape, that is seen and interpreted with either appeal and excitement to the part of the population that never really experienced the regime, and with anguish and somehow resentment from the people who actually lived it.
All the history of the past that the bunker as an archetype in the Albanian reality of nowadays carries on its shoulders, makers its future the more and more ambiguous. And simultaneously, their striking existence in hundred thousand of copies of each, in their static, rough and stagnant state cannot be ignored. It resides as a still painting on the landscape, that is seen and interpreted with either appeal and excitement to the part of the population that never really experienced the regime, and with anguish and somehow resentment from the people who actually lived it.
What’s next
The bunker today is stuck in the middle of a definition of being a remain of the past and an artefact of the future, in its hundred ways of perception. The reality although is that it coexists with its past in the present contemporary life and distinguishing its presence might be the means that clarifies its future too.
While hauling around with the confusion of reactions it gives to people, the new reality the world is living in raises the question of the value of this kind of architecture. Will the future actually make it useful?
Source: Azizaj, S. (2020). Healing Bunkers. Reinterpretation of the Albanian Bunkers (dissertation).