Following more than forty years of successive wars and political unrest in Iraq, the discussion of heritage preservation and the reinforcement of the cultural identity for rebuilding peace and sustainable development is inevitable. The systematic destruction of high-profile historic sites during warfare and the tragic loss of the architectural heritage have not only affected the country’s historic legacies from the past but also played a crucial role in shaping its current architectural disturbed system. However, in post-war Iraq, the rising waves of irregulated investment and non-sustainable development have caused further damage threatening not only the existence of the architectural heritage and the cultural and the historic national identity of the country but also tremendously hindering the possible potentials for rebuilding peace and sustainable future. What have survived the war, is now demolished by property developers, without even being documented, and replaced with alien structures not considering the particular requirements of the local context. Hence, this paper highlights the potentials of historic preservation not only for saving and protecting the cultural and architectural heritage but also as an active strategy for reviving the historic identity of the country, rebuilding peace, and sustainable development. This discussion also includes addressing the case of the disappeared heritage and the uncompleted discourse of the modern architectural history of the country due to the continuous destruction of heritage. Saving the legacies of the past is proposed in this paper as an active strategy for building a sustainable future, particularly in postwar contexts.
Dr. Venus S. Akef is an awards-winning architect and scholar; a Postdoctoral Weinberg Fellow in architectural history and preservation – The Italian Academy, Columbia University, NY, USA, 2021-2022. She received her PhD in Architecture in 2019 and graduated with a Certificate in Historic Preservation in 2018, both from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. She is the founder and director of the Historic Preservation Technology Unit at the University of Technology in Baghdad, Iraq. The coordinator and in charge of the University of Technology membership at the United Nations Academic Impact UNAI