To date, dozens of political histories, participant autobiographies, journalistic accounts, and academic investigations have addressed the many aspects of the War on Terror. Urban Research’s (UR) latest book, Spaces of Disappearance: The Architecture of Extraordinary Rendition by architectural researcher and educator Jordan H. Carver, adds to the national conversation and reckoning with torture by providing an in-depth analysis of the US’s secret network of black site prisons as a project of architectural production.

From the book’s introduction by architectural historian and theorist Felicity D. Scott: “Reflecting back on this recent history of violence through a critical architectural lens, Carver articulates a compelling conceptual and evidentiary terrain and an ethico-political framework through which to return not just to the war in Iraq but also to that in Afghanistan and the even more nebulous War on Terror.

On September 21, the Center for Architecture welcomed Carver for a conversation with Laura Pitter, Senior National Security Counsel at Human Rights Watch and Amrit Singh of the Open Society Justice Initiative. The conversation was moderated by Reinhold Martin, Professor of Architecture at Columbia GSAPP.