In Architecture and the Right to Heal, Esra Akcan calls for architecture to take an active role in healing communities affected by socioeconomic, political, and environmental disasters. Akcan frames these processes by discussing buildings and spaces in relation to climate change mitigation and transitional justice. Focusing on lands held by the former Ottoman Empire, Akcan highlights the ongoing struggle to heal after internal social, state, and business-led violence ranging from enforced disappearance to mass extinction. Putting forth the concept of resettler nationalism as a source of displacement and partition, she argues that while architecture and urban planning have been weaponized to segregate and subjugate minorities throughout history, they could instead confront systemic violence and make accountability and reparations possible. For Akcan, healing constitutes a matter of rights as well as a holistic notion of justice that addresses the intersections of social, global and environmental issues, and one that can be achieved through architecture. By locating spaces of political and ecological harm, Akcan advocates for healing on individual, communal, and planetary levels.
By:
Esra Akcan
Imprint: Duke University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 572g
ISBN: 9781478029243
ISBN 10: 1478029242
Pages: 456
Publication Date: 11 November 2025
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Enforced Disappearance: Urban Squares, Cemeteries, Memorials 40 2. Partition: Camps, Model Villages, Retrofits 76 3. Collapse: Slums, Real Estate, Cultural Buildings 138 4. Climate Disaster: Master Plans, Plantations, Campuses 194 5. Extinction: Gardens, Parks, Ruderal Urban Spaces 277 Notes 323 Bibliography 389 Index
Esra Akcan is Professor of Architecture at Cornell University and author of Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey, and the Modern House, also published by Duke University Press, Open Architecture: Migration, Citizenship and the Urban Renewal of Berlin-Kreuzberg by IBA 1984/87, and Abolish Human Bans: Intertwined Histories of Architecture.
Reviews for Architecture and the Right to Heal: Resettler Nationalism in the Aftermath of Conflict and Disaster
""Animated by a compelling ethos, Architecture and the Right to Heal challenges the limits of architectural discourse and extends cutting-edge debates in the global field of memory studies on restoration, transitional justice, and potential healing. It stands in a long tradition of critical enlightened thought and breaks new ground at the intersection of architecture, memory studies, human rights, and urban studies.""--Andreas Huyssen, author of Memory Art in the Contemporary World: Confronting Violence in the Global South
