Baghdad’s Urban Restructuring, 1958: Aesthetics and Politics of Nation Building

Abstract

This article examines the 1955 to 1958 restructuring of Baghdad proposed by the architect and planner Constantinos Doxiadis. Analyzing the overall master plan and the design and construction of housing units and public squares, the article demonstrates how Doxiadis's social and formal experiments, which drew on larger mid-twentieth-century debates on modernism, urbanism, regionalism, and development, also became intertwined with the Iraqi regime's agenda for nation building. As the Iraqi capital has again become the site for new visions of reconstruction and development, it is important to critically revisit this recent history of the city.