TECTONIC SQUARE

The iron square-shaped sculpture investigates the development of executed architecture in Iraq. The sculpture is composed of three layers. The floating base mirrors the heritage sites before the founding of the modern state of Iraq in 1921. The second layer represents the so-called ‘Golden Age’ in Iraqi architecture within the period of the 1940s to 1990s. He chose the shape of a square because of its stable form, which represents for him a system.

The system with two layers holds the third, representing the chaos in the urban fabric we currently live in, with random buildings and the development of projects that do not take into account the privacy and needs of society. This leads to the lack of a clear system in design, resulting in the absence of identity.

The two surfaces peeled off from the square represent the architect and society as two sides of the same coin, where common elements connect them, such as culture, history, and the environment, highlighting the intertwined relationship between society and architecture. The actual mission of architecture is to improve people’s lives. The reality of architecture and urban fabric applied in Iraq needs a lot of development and improvement to suit the nature of society and its way of life.