APOCALYPTIC ARCHITECTURE:
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SURVIVAL ARCHITECTURE SINCE THE COLD WAR

As humans we are – without fur or claws – absolutely defenceless against the perils of our environment: We have to build shelters and housings to protect us against rain, storm, heat, cold or even wild animals. At all times we also had to erect special housings to protect ourselves from raids of other humans. Throughout history castles, city walls and protective barriers were built to protect monarchs and the city’s population; stocks of food and goods were increased to survive attacks. With every advancement of weapon technology though, new defence and protection mechanisms had to be developed and new defence mechanisms in turn required the design of new weapons.

Since the invention of nuclear weapons and the possibility of destroying the entire civilisation, many protective structures were built and the notion of the shelter became the main strategy for the survival of civilisation. Many dystopian visions seemed to become reality and men had to live underground beneath the uninhabitable surface.

This research project is an investigation of these structures in Europe, Russia and North America and their relation to society during the Cold War, as well as their relevance today. Some of them are hidden as they were kept secret and some are hidden inside other structures. Digging under the surface of the Cold War means to bring something forward that might lie under everyday structures.

The underground city that Dr. Strangelove proposes has never been built although some military and governmental underground facilities came quite close. The Cold War architecture is a continuation of the underground architecture that has started in the second world war, where not only command sites were moved underground but also factories and warehouses.

The protective architecture of the Cold War is unconscious architecture as it is hidden underground or embedded into other structures. This was done because of military and structural aspects but it also has hidden this architecture, as a continuous reminder of the possibility of a nuclear war in which everyone would have been involved.

It was defence architecture and as it is of military nature it is only built in consideration of data and pure facts, but it leaves the human behind. The analogy to the modern idea of the home as a smoothly running machine, tailored to the bodies need, most often disregards the inhabitants mental needs. Military architecture extends the human scale and in terms of nuclear defence architecture it extents the scale of mankind as thermonuclear war is the destruction of time.

The architectural remains of the Cold War are war memorials and almost the only image we can bring to our mind of this war that never was. When visiting these places today they seem to be dream-like and surreal as monsters from the past.

Most shelters and bunkers, apart from the military bunkers, are more designed for the psychological needs – to open the possibility of a survival, to reduce the fear of a thermonuclear war and the apocalypse it would cause rather than being effective protective structures. Protective nuclear architecture is architecture for the mind, monuments for the possibility for a life after the war rather than life preserving machines. But through their existence they make a nuclear war more likely – the one who feels safe is more willing to drop the bomb.