“Over time, Baghdad became a palimpsest of successive attempts to manage its growth and transformation; repeatedly overwritten and obscured on the one hand, and constantly rediscovered and employed as a catalyst for new ideas by successive actors on the other.”

Publication: “Palimpsestic Urbanism: Glimpses of Post-World War II Baghdad,” in Baghdad: Eye’s Delight, 58-65, edited by Julia Gonnella, Mounia Chekhab Abudaya, et al. Doha: Museum of Islamic Art, 2022.

Keywords: research, scholarship, modern, modernism, history, past, urban, urbanism, urbanization, planning, city, art, architecture, buildings, post-WWII, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 20th, twentieth, century, artists, architects, groups, collectives, associations, Ellen Jawdat, Mohamed Makiya, Rifat Chadirji, Kahtan Awni, Jewad Selim, Shakir Hasan Al Said, Baghdad Group for Modern Art, global, globalism, local, heritage, traditions, development, modernization, progress, politics, social, cultural, monarchy, republic, revolution, Baghdad, Iraq, South West Asia, North Africa

Image: Jewad Selim, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art