Media

Ruptured City is a short documentary that explores Baghdad during the period of international sanctions, isolation, and Saddam Hussein’s grandiose visions between 1990 and 2003. Through archival footage and interviews with Iraqi experts, the film examines how the city’s urban landscape was reshaped during one of the most difficult periods in its modern history. Focusing on projects such as the Baghdad Tower, the unfinished Al-Rahman Mosque, and the reconstruction efforts following the Gulf War, the documentary reveals how monumental architecture became a tool for projecting the regime’s power, even as sanctions left much of the population struggling with severe shortages. Through the experiences of Iraqi architects and urban planners, Ruptured City uncovers the challenges of designing and building under political pressure, economic hardship, and limited access to materials and technology. Rather than approaching Baghdad through the lens of geopolitics alone, the film tells the story of a city through the people who shaped its built environment, offering a nuanced perspective on architecture, power, and everyday life under sanctions and authoritarian rule.

A brief history of housing cooperatives that shaped the urban morphology of modern Baghdad. From the 1950s to the end of 1980s, the majority of residential plots in the city were distributed through housing cooperatives. Established at ministries, public institutions and trade unions, the housing cooperatives distributed plots among their members. It led to the establishment of neighborhoods based on profession.

With a population of eight million, Baghdad is facing a severe housing crisis. People began to subdivide existing houses, adding more floors or erecting new buildings on already built-up plots, often illegally. Baghdad has become the “city of concrete” and its landscape has changed significantly.

International sanctions closed the doors to the world, but at the same time they opened new opportunities for Iraqi urban planners. Instead of foreign firms, for the first time a team from the University of Baghdad prepared a master plan for Baghdad.

In the 1950s, Iraq invited world-famous architects, including Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier, to design iconic buildings in Baghdad. Few people realize that a Gymnasium designed by Le Corbusier still stands in Baghdad.

Ar-Rasheed Street is the first wide, car-accessible street in Baghdad. Established in 1916 to facilitate the movement of troops through the city, it was named after the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rasheed.

Haifa Street is a major thoroughfare in Baghdad, situated in the Karkh district on the west bank of the Tigris River. It is notable for being the site of Baghdad’s first complex of multi-story residential buildings, introduced at a time when the city was predominantly characterised by low-rise, single-family homes.

Traditional Baghdad houses were built mainly of burnt bricks with a characteristic yellow color and wood. The main element of the traditional house was the inner courtyard with characteristic wooden colonnades.

Mohammed Makiya was one of the first Iraqi architects. He founded the first Department of Architecture at the College of Engineering, Baghdad University. His work embodies ideas of urban conservation, regionalism in form, and continuity of architectural heritage.

One of the most beautiful monuments of the Abbasid period. It is one of the few remaining monuments from the time when Baghdad was the capital of the Islamic world.