Opening the bunker

Function, materiality, temporality

Bibliographic Data

ID8090598
AuthorsBradley Garrett (0000-0003-0414-3175, The University of Sydney), Ian Klinke (0000-0002-7926-8450, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume37
Issue6
Pages1063-1081
Publication date2018-12-11
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning C Politics and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2399-6544 • E-ISSN: 2399-6552
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/2399654418816316
OpenAlexW2905202843
LanguageEN
Citations received24
References cited33

Recent scholarship has drawn attention to a ubiquitous 20th-century political space that was long overlooked – the bunker. This body of work draws on a variety of theoretical influences and explores multiple historical contexts, yet most remains wedded to the late Paul Virilio’s influential 1970s study of the Nazi Atlantic Wall. Enlightening as his ‘Bunker Archeology’ is, Virilio’s theorization has constrained contemporary debates around the function, materiality and temporality of the bunker. Here, we seek to counter this set of limitations in three ways. First, we contest the idea of the bunker as a simple space of human protection and argue for a more expansive conceptualization that is attentive to the bunker as a site of extermination. Second, we challenge the assumed concrete materiality of the bunker and suggest an expanded typology, utilizing a range of materials and milieux. Finally, we take to task readings of the bunker as an obsolete relic by highlighting the continued construction, re-appropriation and reimagination of this architectural form

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Bunker · Epistemology · Expansive · Materiality (auditing · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Temporalities · Temporality · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Law · Literature and Cultural Memory · Philosophy · Photography and Visual Culture

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