A bad day for architecture in Iraq

Two stories on the NBC Nightly News this evening caught my attention—first, the destruction of two minarets on a sacred Shiite mosque in Samarra, and second, the construction of the massive new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

The destruction of the famous minarets on the sacred Al-Askari mosque (the "Golden Mosque") follows a prior attack that destroyed its massive golden dome in February 2006. (Note: the picture on the top was taken prior to the 2006 attack, and the minarets are still in place.) The bombing, likely by Al-Qaeda, led to (what else?) lots and lots of sectarian violence, and Shiites have retaliated by destroying Sunni mosques. I haven’t studied Islamic architecture a whole lot, but apparently the Al-Askari mosque is one of Iraq's treasures from the turn of the century. Obviously all of these buildings are very important to the people of Iraq and are imbued with special meaning in Islamic consciousness. If the violence continues (and it looks like it will for a long time), there’s a strong possibility that an entire culture’s architectural treasures will be wiped out completely. In this sense, I suppose Iraq has something in common with New Orleans: both are experiencing a crisis in historic architecture. Of course, architecture receives somewhat scant attention in the news in comparison to the tragedy of human lives, and rightly so. But it’s still very sad. From the pictures I've seen, the mosque before its destruction was absolutely glitteringly beautiful.

The new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad…I’m sorry, but this thing is doomed. It's been doomed since it was just a zygote of a building in its architect’s head. (Well, more likely an engineer’s head. Because the U.S. government is trying to keep its budget down, you know, so it can't afford an architect. It only had $592 million to spend on this project.) NBC described it as a “white elephant,” and indeed, the place is likely to be targeted by everyone and their mother. It’s made up of 27 separate buildings behind “bomb-proof” walls. I assume they mean "bomb-proof" in the same way people claimed the Titanic was "unsinkable." The embassy also includes a 16,000 square foot home with a pool and a gym for the ambassador. (Hell, you gotta give the guy a few perks. He’s the ambassador to Iraq.) The funniest thing is that they’re worried it won’t be large enough to house all of the diplomats and military leaders who need secure housing. The compound is 104 acres, roughly the size of Vatican City. I’ve been to Vatican City, and let me tell you, the Vatican is a lot prettier than this monstrosity. Memo to the government: your embassy is the size of a small country. How about before we build a small country inside Iraq, we try rebuilding Iraq itself. For example, maybe we could rebuild one of these mosques that's causing all the commotion. Not to mention the embassy is fugly (and I reserve that word for only the fugliest of buildings). Now, I’m about as big a fan of modern architecture as you’ll find, concrete and all, but this is too humongous to even be comprehensible. It’s a glorified fallout shelter. I suppose form follows function, though.