At New York’s Center for Architecture, a quiet yet compelling exhibition of architectural models constructed under immense secrecy in Iraq is offering visitors a rare glimpse into the 20th-century dreams for Baghdad. While it is common
knowledge that such mid-century masters as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Alvar Aalto occasionally took their practices across international borders, many who know their work well might be surprised to learn that all four, along with a number of their prominent contemporaries, once designed ambitious projects for Iraq.
The exhibition, titled City of Mirages: Baghdad, 1952-1982, introduces this lesser-known body of work, creating a narrative that places these visionary designs into their proper historical, political, and artistic context. Running through May 5th at the American Institute of Architects’ Center for Architecture in New York, the showcase brings together 15 models representing both built and unbuilt work by 11 different architects. These figures were commissioned during the mid-century decades when Baghdad officials were ambitiously striving to create a modern city, driven by the profound hope that visionary design could shape society in addition to transforming the physical built environment.
"This is a history we don’t know a lot about," says Rosamond Fletcher, director of exhibitions at the Center, who first heard about the show from a colleague. Emphasizing its enduring relevance, she adds, "The exhibition is historic in scope but relevant," particularly as Baghdad attempts to rebuild and reimagine its future after almost a decade of war.
Making its United States debut at the Center, the exhibition was originally organized for the Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya in Barcelona, where it debuted in 2008. Bringing the collection together was a remarkably difficult and dangerous undertaking, according to curator Pedro Azara, a professor at the Barcelona School of Architecture. Azara, whose academic research focuses on mythology and architecture, stumbled upon the topic of international architects working in Baghdad in the mid-20th century back in 2006. His curiosity was immediately sparked by the uneven documentation of these historical projects and the widespread lack of awareness regarding their current states of preservation or disrepair.
To realize the exhibition, Azara began working closely with students and professors at the University of Baghdad’s architecture school to build all but one of the models featured in the show. Fearing severe reprisals from various political factions over creating an exhibition destined for the West, their entire collaborative process had to be shrouded in strict secrecy. Participating students had no idea they were building models intended for a Spanish exhibition; messages and emails exchanged between the show’s organizers were deliberately enigmatic, and Azara himself told almost no one when he traveled to Baghdad.
The resulting models at the Center mostly stand alone, intentionally presented without accompanying photography or drawings. This smart visual trick allows museum visitors to imagine how these structures, had they been fully built and kept intact, might have influenced and shaped the city. In reality, however, most of these visionary projects met unfortunate fates as victims of war, suffering severe damage, total destruction, or remaining entirely unbuilt on paper.
Among the standout pieces is a 1957 mosque designed by Walter Gropius, The Architects’ Collaborative, and Hisham A. Munir for the University of Baghdad campus. The design brilliantly reduces the traditional mosque building type to its essential dome, which delicately touches the ground at only three points. Another major highlight is an opera house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright between 1957 and 1959. Though never built, the design sits on an artificial hill approached by a spiraling road—a spatial concept that Wright’s famous Guggenheim Museum, designed earlier but completed in the same year of 1959, takes to an extreme.
Other models featured in the exhibition include a dynamic sports arena designed by Le Corbusier, innovative housing blocks conceived by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and John Rauch, and a mosque designed by Ricardo Bofill and commissioned by Saddam Hussein. Notably, the dictator held repeated competitions for this particular mosque for over two decades because he was consistently unhappy with each successive jury’s chosen winner.
Providing a stark contrast to these mid-century modernist ideals, a large-scale model of contemporary Baghdad sits prominently in the Center’s double-height atrium. Viewed from above, it vividly conveys the immense geographical and logistical hurdles that the city’s seven million residents encounter each day, navigating a metropolis lacking adequate public transportation to deliver them to their jobs, under the looming threat of a curfew that equates dusk with danger.
Reflecting on the motivations behind the project, Azara explains the broader cultural goals of the undertaking. "We wanted to try to change the image we had in Spain of Iraq," he says of organizing the exhibition. "We also wanted to show that, while Spain was in the third world under Francisco Franco, Baghdad had been a really open place, with very contemporary art and a nonreligious society."
In addition to City of Mirages, the Center for Architecture is simultaneously showcasing current work in the greater Middle East through a complementary exhibition. On view through June 23 on the Center’s lower level, CHANGE: Architecture and Engineering in the Middle East, 2000-Present strikes a hopeful and forward-looking note, featuring glossy, futuristic renderings and photographs.
The Center held an open call for built and unbuilt work executed across the Middle East over the past decade. The resulting 123 projects, designed for roughly 20 Middle Eastern countries, are intended to serve as a comprehensive snapshot of contemporary architectural developments in the region. Highlights range from Richard Meier’s Rothschild Tower in Tel Aviv and James Carpenter’s Israel Museum in Jerusalem to 360 Architecture’s Basrah Sport City in Iraq, with both of the latter projects slated for completion in 2013.
