Rubble: The Architecture of Memory and Rebirth

Rubble is more than a byproduct of destruction—it is an active and contested material reality, holding within it the layered histories of urban struggle, material archive, erasure, and resilience.

In Gaza today, rubble dominates both the physical and psychological landscape, with an estimated 50 million tonnes scattered across the region. According to the United Nations, if the blockade remains, reconstruction could take 350 years; even without it, the process will span decades and require billions of dollars.

But rubble is not just a logistical challenge—it is a site of profound human cost. Beneath the debris lie the remains of thousands, turning entire districts into unmarked cemeteries, with an estimated 10,000 people still buried. It poses a public health crisis, as fine dust and toxic contaminants seep into the soil and groundwater, threatening agriculture and water supplies. It carries psychological weight, an ever-present reminder of destruction, displacement, and an uncertain future. And yet, it remains a space of life—former homes, schools, places of worship, malls, and markets exist in various stages of ruin, with people continuing to navigate and exist among the wreckage. It is also an inescapable material reality—Gaza’s restricted import-export economy means that any rebuilding effort will likely have to incorporate the very material of destruction.

The focus on Gaza City, the historical and economic heart of the region, reveals these complexities. Its destruction is not merely an infrastructural collapse but a violent rupture of urban continuity. As one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Gaza City has long been central to Palestinian culture, commerce, and resilience. Any future rebuilding effort will either center on Gaza City or emerge from it, making its rubble not just a remnant of the past, but a foundation for what comes next.

Mapping the scale of destruction became essential. The image on the right illustrates this reality, built from multiple data sources, including Forensic Architecture’s investigative research, QGIS and ARC GIS mapping tools, and Google Maps satellite imagery up to early 2025. Four interconnected maps emerge: a snapshot of Gaza City’s infrastructure before the war, documented points of destruction, an assessment of remaining structures as of January 2025, and finally, a complete picture of building destruction and accumulated rubble. The overwhelming truth becomes clear—there is now more rubble than standing structures. Rubble has become the new urban infrastructure. Even with extensive data and visualisation, the scale of devastation remains difficult to fully comprehend.

The drawing on the left orients the study within Gaza, identifying a central section of Gaza City as the research site—an area that offers a cross-section of urban life and the destruction that now defines it. Chosen for its diverse range of infrastructure and functions, the site tells different stories of loss, resilience, and survival. A cemetery immediately evokes the reality that much of Gaza’s rubble is also a burial site, a place of death and memory. A place of worship, one of Gaza’s oldest structures, stands as a testament to historical resilience, having been destroyed and rebuilt countless times. A school represents education and public space, a symbol of a future now thrown into upheaval for the youngest generation. A residential neighborhood embodies the destruction of everyday life, where homes have been reduced to ruins, yet life persists in fragments.

Below is a historical study of the Great Omari Mosque, a site that has endured repeated cycles of destruction and reconstruction over centuries. More than three thousand years old, the mosque stands as a testament to resilience, its survival marked by adaptation and renewal. Photographic evidence from the past 150 years documents its repeated collapse into rubble and its subsequent rebirth, a visual record of Gaza’s built environment withstanding the forces of war, occupation, pandemic, and uprising.

The patterns that emerge from this history reveal fundamental truths about architecture in Gaza. Built spaces have never been static; they have continually adapted to conflict and change. Destruction does not mean erasure—each reconstruction carries traces of the past, embedding history within new walls. Rebuilding is not just a process of material recovery but a restoration of cultural and historical continuity. The Great Omari Mosque serves as a case study in architectural resilience, challenging the assumption that ruins represent permanent loss. Its history underscores a difficult but undeniable reality: destruction does not erase heritage. Instead, rubble becomes part of Gaza’s ongoing struggle for sovereignty, not an endpoint, but a continuation.

The drawing on the right, an elevation study, situates this rubble within Gaza’s geological and archaeological layers, emphasizing its vertical presence and historical continuity. Rather than focusing solely on surface-level distribution, this perspective reveals rubble as part of a deeper, stratified history of destruction and rebuilding. The drawing’s composition reinforces this weight—depicting rubble pressing downward, with little free space aboveground, evoking a sense of claustrophobia and the inescapable physical and historical burden it represents.

Early in the research process, while combing through photographs and reports, the deep human dimension of rubble became impossible to ignore. Before delving into spatial and architectural analyses, the discussion must first be grounded in the humanity within the destruction. From a distance, especially for those outside Gaza, rubble may appear as nothing more than shattered concrete, twisted metal, and broken glass. But within it lies so much more.

The remains of ten thousand Gazans still rest beneath the debris, yet to be recovered. Among the wreckage, fragments of lives persist—books, toys, clothing, furniture, family heirlooms, art, schoolbooks, handwritten notes, washing machines—each object a silent testament to the people who once inhabited these spaces. This attempts to capture the humanity of rubble and serves as an archive, cataloging items identified through photographs of Gaza City’s rubble, an effort to expand public understanding of what destruction truly encompasses. Beyond collapsed buildings, rubble is a repository of memory, a physical record of lives interrupted.

This reality raises difficult questions: What does it mean for a city’s architectural landscape to become both a graveyard and a memorial? How can reconstruction acknowledge the profound human loss embedded within the urban fabric? The answers remain uncertain, but what is clear is that rubble is never just material.

The drawing below documents the transformation of Gaza’s urban spaces, mapping Gaza’s main cemetery before and after destruction. Using satellite imagery up to December 2024, these urban plans reveal not only the collapse of buildings but, in some areas, the complete erasure of entire swaths of infrastructure. More than a record of loss, this mapping begins to categorize and archive different types of rubble, recognizing its varied materiality and impact on the city.

Structural rubble remains identifiable, fragments of buildings still standing or partially intact. Loose small rubble, scattered in hills and piles, spreads across roads and open spaces, accumulating in ways that further disrupt the city’s fabric. The extent of the damage is staggering. Buildings that once shaped Gaza’s social and economic life now lie in ruins, their debris spilling into streets, erasing pathways, and fundamentally altering the spatial logic of the city. Alleys have vanished, blocks have merged—familiar routes and landmarks no longer exist. These transformations are not just architectural but deeply psychological, a rupture in the urban fabric where spaces of memory, learning, and community have been violently reshaped.

The cemetery, intended as a site of remembrance and dignity, now mirrors the mass graves beneath Gaza’s ruins.