How can construction be an instrument of peace? Post-conflict cities share many problems such as spontaneous construction and a lack of strong civil governance, thus even well-intended projects under these conditions risk fixing inequalities permanently or introducing new ones in the built environment. Can architecture, beyond solving a direct need or problem, add to stability and peace? The Good Cause: Architecture of Peace considers cases that suggest how peace can be materialized.

Complementing the exhibition Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War, NAi, the Netherlands Architecture Institute, presents The Good Cause, an experimental research lab that explores the possibilities for architecture to strengthen the transformation of post-conflict urban areas. Gathering statistical data, graphics, maps, movies, publications, fragments of real life, pictures and interviews this temporary experimental space will survey the controversial thin line between the architecture of war and the architecture of peace within the unstable condition of ‘reconstruction’.

The vernissage for The Good Cause is 16 June 2011.