Marco Brioni

CIT-IES is a long-term project about divided cities in Europe. It explores the logic of violent urban partition along ethnic/religious/political lines focusing especially on urban, architectonical and human costs of these division (present or past). It wants to offer a warning beacon to a growing class of cities torn apart by ethnic or ideological rivals. I wanted to illuminate the history of urban dividing lines, the social impacts of physical partition and the assorted professional responses to „self-imposed apartheid.“

Since the onset of the Troubles in 1971, Nationalist and Loyalist communities throughout Northern Ireland have been divided by Peace Walls. These large stone and steel constructions were designed to protect neighbourhoods from sporadic attacks and retain a sense of peace and protection.
The patterns that emerge support an assertion that division is a gradual, predictable, and avoidable occurrence that ultimately impedes intercommunal cooperation.