Fronts - by Ersela Kripa & Stephen Mueller (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

FRONTS uncovers a growing geography of codependence between the global security complex and the urban morphologies of the developing world, which it increasingly incriminates. Military training sites provide a lens through which we can better understand the shape of the city to come. Military doctrine has recently and dramatically shifted to view the world's cities as suspect sites of potential aggression. As the majority of new urban life will manifest in informal development, the world is now more than ever explicitly divided in two camps--those who view the informal city as an opportunity, and those who view the informal city as a threat. This paradigmatic shift has set the stage for impending conflict between security and development interests, which use the informal city as their site.

Review Quotes

"Kripa and Mueller have made a careful, comprehensive, and simultaneously enlightening and frightening study of how the military has created a shadow version of architecture. ...Fronts shows us once again that war is the ultimate R&D lab for the future of designed environment. The army has more toys, more knowledge, and is more clear-eyed about the appearance of new forms of habitation and design. Kripa and Mueller have created a great foundational volume. I hope others will further worm their way into the military-industrial complex, steal its secrets, and help us figure out how to fight the fight for good architecture-open, inclusive, and sustainable." Aaron Betsky, Architect Magazine--Aaron Betsky "Architect Magazine"

"This fascinating tale of a completely unexamined area of discourse around the built environment will prove to be a valuable resource for those interested in how the most powerful and resource-rich actors are making the global city in the 21st century." Matt Shaw, Texas Architect--Matt Shaw "Texas Architect"

"As security regimes expand into either the remainders of the nation state or territories outside of law, spatial evidence gains new authority within the usual legal or economic assessments. FRONTS tracks and graphically measures those heavy precipitates of global capital and military conflict as they mix in toxic spatial cocktails of logistics, humanitarianism, militarism, training, and incarceration." Keller Easterling--Architect; Professor & Director of the Master of Environmental Design Program, Yale University; Author, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space

"Kripa and Mueller peel back the curtain on the spreading geography of urban simulation. This astonishing original research illuminates the future of military urbanism by interrogating it at its source." Trevor Paglen--Artist; Geographer; Author, Invisible: Covert Operations and Invisible Landscapes