Editorial Reviews

Review

By refusing to recoil in horror from these ironic monuments, or even simply to ignore them as so many other shell-shocked by the experience of war had done, Virilio admirably shows how even the most challenging forms of architecture are open to historical debate and aesthetic interpretation. The book's black-and-white photographs are poignant illustrations of his larger points. --Dwell: (January, 2009)

"Paul Virilio's classic book of wartime architectural history, Bunker Archeology, is finally back in print with a fantastic new edition from Princeton Architectural Press. The book had taken on the feel of something like an urban legendsomething of which many had heard but few had directly experiencedso it's good to get our hands on a copy." -- Geoff Manaugh (January, 2009) --Dwell Magazine

"Bunker Archeology redefines the blockhaus within the cultural context of modern architecture, providing an iconic model for French design cultural that represents both its extremes and limits. Its metaphor becomes the means to conceptually objectify architecture to a minimalist end, allowing the architect to play on the theme of the monolith and its aftermath, the fractal." --The Architect's Newspaper

Review

"The Atlantic Wall, (was) an attempt by the Germans to fortify the entire west coast of France as the threat of Allied invasion increased. The relics of this 'wall', on cliff-tops or among sand dunes, staring out at the sae, are the subject of Bunker Archeology." -- Andrew Mead (June, 1996)

Review

"The photographs alone should capture a wide interest; but how are we to think about such enigmatic, radical and compelling objects? The comentary is important, firstly as indicating the origins of Virilio's concern with military space and as introduction to his thoughts about the relation between architectural thought and mordern warfare." -- Mark Cousins (April 21, 1995)

Review

"Bunker Archeology is a brilliant grab bag of reflections on the evolution of military architecture, the construction of the Third Reich's Atlantic Wall, and the time, space, and technology of war....

Virilio's nuanced ideas leap and grow as the book progresses; he combines technical information and historical facts with poetry. For someone so preoccupied by concrete bunkers, he's amazingly agile." -- Christine Schwartz (June, 1994)

Book Description

"Some stand like parking garages on dunes, some like the modernist slabs you might see on a La Jolla hillside or on the drive out Long Island to Montauk. Virilio's text, although sometimes given to the ethereal, reads just enough into these objects to animate them to their fullest as mournful and alien symbols of a brutal past. " (November, 1994)

About the Author

Paul Virilio is a renowned urbanist, political theorist, and art critic.

Out of print for almost a decade, we are thrilled to bring back one of our most requested hard-to-find titlesphilosopher and cultural theorist Paul Virilio's Bunker Archeology. In 1994 we published the first English-language translation of the classic French edition of 1975, which accompanied an exhibition of Virilio's photographs at the Centre Pompidou. In Bunker Archeology, urbanist Paul Virilio turns his attentionand camerato the ominous yet strangely compelling German bunkers that lie abandoned along the coast of France. These ghostly reminders of destruction and oppression prompted Virilio to consider the nature of war and existence, in relation to both World War II and contemporary times. Virilio discusses fortresses and military space in general as well as the bunkers themselves, including an examination of the role of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, in the rise of the Third Reich.