Failed Architecture

This article is part of the FA special series Everywhere Walls, Borders, Prisons. In “Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS,” a chronicle of the life and career of ISIS “grandfather” Abu Musab al Zarqawi, journalist Joby Warrick opens with a description of Al Jafr prison in southeastern Jordan, where al Zarqawi was incarcerated between 1992 and 1999. Warrick describes the prison as: The most notorious of Jordan’s prisons […] known for decades as the place where troublesome men went to be forgotten.

This article is part of the FA special series Everywhere Walls, Borders, Prisons. To many Eastern Europeans, the year 1991 is like a beloved partner’s birth year. It was a year of new beginnings, as 15 countries joyfully declared independence from the Soviet Union. It was not exactly known what would come to pass between the former sister republics, but few foresaw the forthcoming border checks and divisions that would come to characterise their relations.

This article is part of the FA special series Everywhere Walls, Borders, Prisons. The city of Quetta is functionally a garrison. Situated on the borderlands of competing geopolitical interests, the capital was largely constructed to serve as a military base for the British Army after the First Anglo-Afghan War. Since the Partition of British India, the Pakistani Army has used major infrastructural development as a tool for colonial domination in the city.

On Youtefa Bay, Jayapura, opening into the Pacific Ocean, spans the Youtefa Bridge at 732 meters long. It serves as then-president Joko Widodo’s first infrastructure project in West Papua, as part of the Trans-Papua road network, to ‘unite’ the nation through connectivity’. The bridge is at the epicentre of a multilayered series of socio-ecological problems, intertwining indigenous populations, the State, and the environment.

This article is part of the FA special series Everywhere Walls, Borders, Prisons. Inside Gjadër, a small village in northwestern Albania, the streets lie empty under the scorching July sun. Once a site of strategic importance during the communist era, the village hosted the region’s most significant military base. Back at the time, the air buzzed with the sound of landing aircraft, which were sheltered in extensive underground hangars connected by a network of tunnels.

This article is part of the FA special series Everywhere Walls, Borders, Prisons. Images of people sleeping on the floors of waiting rooms and in tents provisionally pitched on lawns. These are the sensationalist images people most associate with the rural town of Ter Apel, where the Netherlands’ largest asylum seeker centre is located.

Listen to this episode and subscribe to the FA podcast on , Spotify, Google Podcasts,Overcast, or wherever else you usually get your podcasts. This episode focuses on Greece’s so-called new generation refugee camps, officially known as Closed Controlled Access Centres or CCACs. These are high-tech compounds located on islands such as Samos and Lesvos used to process, detain, and surveil people on the move.

This article is part of the FA special series Everywhere Walls, Borders, Prisons. In 1982, the state of Ohio selected a site for a new state prison: 2700 Transport Road, Cuyahoga County.

Listen to this episode and subscribe to the FA podcast on , Spotify, Google Podcasts,Overcast, or wherever else you usually get your podcasts.

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