Authors

Michal Murawski¹;  ¹ UCL, UK

Discussion

This paper delves into the visions for “reconstruction” articulated by the russian Federal Ministry of Construction for the temporarily-occupied cities and towns of eastern and southern Ukraine: Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Mariupol. The most detailed treatment is reserved for the “masterplan” for Mariupol published by the Ministry in October 2022. The Mariupol plan entirely neglects the Soviet-era residential districts reduced to rubble by Russian shelling and bombardment; fails to incorporate any substantive memorial dimension nor any recognition of the human and material tragedy experienced by the city; and, most egregiously, proposes to transforms the ruins of the Azovstal steel plant – the last bastion of Ukrainian forces in the city before their surrender in May 2022 – into a “post-industrial” technopark, complete with High Line-style perennial landscaping and a smattering of museimified light industrial facilities. It interprets these speculative visions of "dark reconstruction" - in territories whose future continues to hang in the balance - in the context of already-implemented architectural and infrastructural projects led by state and private actors in territories laid to waste by russia and its allies, focusing on Chechnya and Syria. Further, it lays out some starting points for a comparative research agenda on the specificities of 21st century russia-led "dark reconstruction", seen against the historical background of Nazi “reconstruction” visions for occupied Europe, informed by Carl Schmitt’s “new concept of space”; but also in the setting of coeval projects of reconstruction-after-urbicide implemented by the US and Israel in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.