Architecture and Conflict

Rebuilding Identity, Continuity, and Spatial Agency in Post-War Mosul

This article examines how architecture can contribute to rebuilding identity, continuity and spatial agency in contexts marked by protracted violence, focusing on the post-war reconstruction of the Old City of Mosul. The recent escalation of global armed conflicts and the growing inability of major international organisations to mediate or protect civilians have exposed the fragility of reconstruction frameworks, often limited to emergency responses that overlook cultural and socio-spatial dimensions. Within this landscape, the role of architects extends beyond technical repair, involving the safeguarding of material and immaterial identities and the reactivation of everyday life.

Through a theoretical lens that interprets reconstruction as cultural reinstatement and spatial justice, the article analyses the Ekhlas School project developed by ARCò – Architettura e Cooperazione within the UNESCO initiative Revive the Spirit of Mosul. The research adopts a multi-scalar methodology integrating urban analysis, participatory processes with local communities, and the reinterpretation of local architectural elements such as courtyards and Musciarabia. Environmental strategies, including passive cooling, ventilated façades, water-reuse systems and photovoltaic integration, are studied as contemporary adaptations of traditional climatic logics.

The case demonstrates how architecture can act simultaneously on technical, environmental, cultural and social registers, generating forms of continuity that resist erasure and rebuild trust in a deeply fractured urban context. Ultimately, the article argues that reconstruction, when rooted in context-specific knowledge and community engagement, becomes a form of spatial diplomacy capable of restoring agency and supporting long-term cultural and territorial resilience.

The progressive deterioration of the global geopolitical landscape in recent decades has profoundly reshaped the conditions under which architecture is conceived, produced, and experienced. The system of norms, institutions, and multilateral mechanisms that emerged after the Second World War, intended to govern disputes, limit violence, and promote cooperation, appears increasingly fragile. Recent data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program shows that in 2024 the number of active armed conflicts involving state actors reached sixty-one (fig. 1), the highest figure since 1946¹.

This escalation is accompanied by a marked inability of major international organisations, starting with the United Nations, to exercise an effective role in mediation, protection, and reconstruction. In recent crises, the structural limitations of multilateral governance have emerged with increasing clarity: decision-making mechanisms paralysed by veto powers; peacekeeping mandates lacking political legitimacy and operational capacity; humanitarian frameworks struggling to address conflicts characterised by asymmetric actors, hybrid warfare, and the systematic targeting of civilian and cultural infrastructures². As a result, international interventions often arrive late, operate with reduced scope, or remain confined to emergency responses that do not address the underlying territorial and socio-political conditions of violence. In many contexts, the absence of an authoritative external mediator has allowed protracted conflicts to harden into spatial regimes of segregation, displacement, and dispossession conditions in which the protection of communities and their built environment becomes increasingly precarious³.

Within this scenario, the architect’s responsibility extends beyond the design of physical spaces. It concerns the protection of identities, both material and immaterial, that anchor communities to their histories and enable them to envision a future. Conflict does not simply destroy buildings, it fractures the spatial, cultural, and symbolic systems through which societies recognise themselves. Heritage becomes a battlefield, both physically and symbolically⁴. Architecture, therefore, must be understood as a discipline that transcends its technical aspects and addresses emergencies with tools that are fundamentally non-neutral. It is a form of context-specific knowledge, grounded in the cultural, social and environmental conditions that shape the lives of communities⁵. In settings marked by violence or structural oppression, architectural practice becomes a political act in the broad sense, a mode of engagement that interprets tensions, mediates between actors with divergent interests and translates local forms of experience into spatial configurations capable of offering protection and continuity. Seen in this light, designing in conflict-affected contexts requires acknowledging the depth of community-embedded knowledge systems and recognising the role that spatial practices play in maintaining identity, autonomy and everyday life⁶.

From this perspective, the contemporary role of the architect intersects with three fundamental challenges: safeguarding the continuity of urban and rural landscapes whose identities are threatened by destruction or neglect; designing with and for communities whose rights, mobility, and access to services are systematically constrained; engaging critically with global frameworks, political, humanitarian, environmental, that shape reconstruction processes and often reproduce the asymmetries that generated conflict.

Against this background, the article adopts a theoretical and methodological lens that interprets reconstruction as an act of cultural reinstatement, spatial justice, and community re-anchoring⁷. Contemporary scholarship emphasises that rebuilding in contexts marked by prolonged violence requires a multidimensional approach that integrates heritage conservation, socio-spatial resilience, and participatory decision-making⁸.

Architecture becomes a mediating practice situated at the intersection between collective memory, environmental constraints and political negotiation. It operates within a field where material reconstruction is inseparable from the restoration of social relations, institutional trust and cultural continuity⁹.

Methodologically, the study combines qualitative and quantitative tools, privileging the direct involvement of local stakeholders and the co-production of knowledge to define needs, priorities and functional programmes. At the same time, rigorous environmental analysis is incorporated, recognising that post-conflict reconstruction must ensure comfort, reduced dependence on external energy sources and long-term operational sustainability. This dual lens, socially grounded and environmentally responsive, aims to produce architectural solutions that are technically viable, culturally rooted and capable of reinforcing community agency.

This framework is applied to the post-war reconstruction of the Old City of Mosul, a context that exemplifies the magnitude and complexity of contemporary conflicts. During more than three years of ISIL/Daesh occupation, Mosul experienced unprecedented intentional destruction of its cultural heritage. The subsequent military campaign to liberate the city further exacerbated the devastation.

UN-Habitat reports¹⁰ describe a “desolate urban panorama”, entire landmarks erased, thousands of dwellings collapsed or structurally compromised, infrastructure systems obliterated, and large sections rendered inaccessible due to rubble, debris and contamination from unexploded ordnance (figg. 2 and 3). Approximately sixty per cent of the historic urban fabric has been severely affected, with more than 550 buildings fully destroyed and nearly 5,000 damaged along the Tigris riverfront¹¹.

Within the broader framework of the international initiative Revive the Spirit of Mosul, UNESCO assumed a coordinating role in the city’s cultural and educational recovery. This article explores one strand of that effort: the project developed by ARCò – Architettura e Cooperazione, winner of a UNESCO call aimed at creating a replicable approach to rebuilding Mosul’s educational system. The initiative culminated in the design and construction of Ekhlas School, conceived as a best practice integrating community engagement, environmental responsiveness and the valorisation of local identities.

The Ekhlas School project aligns with a body of research that interprets architecture in conflict-affected contexts through a context-specific knowledge capable of reconstructing spatial agency, reactivating local knowledge and restoring conditions of everyday life disrupted by violence. The design process adopts a multi-scalar methodological framework integrating urban analysis, climatic studies, social inquiry, and the symbolic interpretation of local heritage.

The project’s methodological sequence began with focus groups involving municipal technicians, school management, teachers, parents, and the children who would use the new facilities (fig. 4).

This participatory phase was essential for defining the functional programme and understanding expectations regarding safety, comfort and cultural belonging. Simultaneously, a typological and morphological study of local architectural traditions was conducted¹². This analysis highlighted the relevance of courtyard spatiality and the widespread use of Musciarabia as devices ensuring privacy, passive shading, and natural light control. These findings informed the conceptual direction of the school, anchoring the design in spatial and cultural continuity.

Environmental sustainability was developed as an integrated layer of the project. The strategy combines passive cooling, material reinterpretation, and resource-efficient technologies, including shading devices, ventilated façades, interlocking courtyards, evapotranspiration-based cooling, water-reuse systems and photovoltaic integration. In adapting these principles to the needs of contemporary living, the project critically reinterprets them¹³. Traditional environmental mediators, such as the courtyard, the Musciarabia, or thick masonry walls, are reimagined through current construction techniques, optimised materials, and performance-based design analysis. This approach enables the spatial qualities of local architecture to be preserved while ensuring that the building meets current expectations of comfort, safety, accessibility and energy efficiency.

For instance, the courtyard, historically a climatic and social device, becomes a calibrated environmental engine capable of regulating temperature and airflow through its proportions, orientation and shading (figg. 5, 6 and 7). 

The use of screened or permeable façades, inspired by Musciarabia, is translated into durable, low-maintenance systems that modulate daylight, enhance privacy, and reduce heat gain (figg. 8 and 9).

The integration of vegetation and evaporative surfaces updates the logic of traditional cooling through water and shade, while modern greywater recovery systems ensure that such features remain environmentally responsible in a resource-scarce context. Likewise, the adoption of photovoltaic panels and ventilated façades introduces forms of active and passive energy management that allow the school to operate with reduced dependence on external energy infrastructure, an essential condition in fragile, post-conflict settings.

We stand at a moment in history defined by escalating global fragility. The tragic landscape of post-conflict cities, like the Old City of Mosul, reveals destruction on a scale that challenges the very possibility of recovery. But it also reveals a profound truth about our discipline: rebuilding is not the act of repairing physical damage; it is the process of reconstituting cultural continuity.

The Ekhlas School project, conceived and executed in the wreckage of occupation and war, offers a critical prototype for this reconstitution. It demonstrates that architecture in conflict-affected contexts must operate simultaneously and with equal rigor across four registers: technical, environmental, cultural, social and political.

In the immediate aftermath of violence, the first registers we address are often the technical and the environmental. This is where competence is measured in stability, safety, and resilience.

But our technical decisions are not just about meeting building codes; they are about guaranteeing protection and durability in a world where structures have been systematically targeted. By integrating passive cooling strategies, leveraging local materials, and deploying resource-efficient technologies like water-reuse systems and photovoltaics, Ekhlas School reduces its dependency on external, fragile, or non-existent energy infrastructure. This technical and environmental self-reliance is the first step toward sovereignty. However, if we stop at the technical, we build only shells. The true healing, the restoration of identity, lies in the cultural and social registers. Conflict aims to erase. It targets the landmarks that embody collective memory, the courtyards, the distinct urban fabric. Reconstruction, therefore, must be an act of cultural reinstatement. By reinterpreting these traditional elements, the Ekhlas School design refused to abandon the spirit of Mosul. It ensures that the space is not foreign, but belonging. This leads us to the social register: the work of building trust. Through participatory focus groups involving children, parents, and teachers, the design process itself became a practice of spatial justice. It granted agency back to the community, ensuring the resulting space reflected not an external blueprint of what they should need, but their own articulated desires for comfort, safety, and cultural belonging.

Here is the essential point: the political dimension of this architecture is not something we design for initially, but something that inevitably emerges from the successful integration of the technical, environmental, cultural, and social factors. When a building stands on a foundation of sound, sustainable engineering (technical/environmental), and simultaneously fulfils memory and empowers its inhabitants (cultural/social), it fundamentally challenges the logic of conflict. It denies the perpetrators of violence the final victory of erasure.

The political act of the Ekhlas School is the successful reconstitution of continuity, continuity between past and present, continuity between communities and their environment, and continuity in everyday social practices. By restoring the community’s capacity to use and shape its built world, by restoring spatial agency, we have performed an act of deep political significance.

Furthermore, architectural design becomes a form of spatial diplomacy, a practice that negotiates memory, resources, and future aspirations through the concrete reality of the built form. Ekhlas School stands as a powerful prototype for a culturally grounded, socially responsive, and environmentally conscious reconstruction, a clear signal that the future of Mosul will be authored, and built, by its own people.