Deserts Are Not Empty

Samia Henni is assistant professor of history of architecture and urban development at Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. She is the author of the multi-award-winning Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (gta Verlag, 2017), the editor of the War Zones gta papers no. 2 (gta Verlag, 2018), and the curator of exhibitions, such as Archives: Secret-Défense? (ifa Gallery, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2021), Housing Pharmacology (Manifesta 13, Marseille, 2020) and Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria (Zurich, Rotterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Paris, Prague, Ithaca, Philadelphia, Charlottesville, 2017–2022). She was formerly Albert Hirschman Chair at the Institute of Advanced Study in Marseille, a visiting Geddes Fellow at Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and a visiting professor at the Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich.

• 1. Against the Regime of “Emptiness” Samia Henni2. Desert Futures CollectiveA Conversation with Brahim El Guabli, Jill Jarvis, and Francisco E. Robles3. It Is Not a Desert Where Grandmother SitsMenna Agha4. Drawing Deserts, Making WorldsDanika Cooper5. Imperial Desert Effect: Palestine Is There, Where It Had Always BeenAriella Aïsha Azoulay6. Space Wars: An Investigation into Kuwait's HinterlandA Conversation with Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, Asaiel Al Saeed, Aseel AlYaqoub, and Yousef Awaad Hussein7. The Colonial-Modern Politics of Desertification (Notes on the Past and the Future of the Amazon Forest)Paulo Tavares8. Overland There’s Shorter Time to DreamXqSu9. Archives of ForgetfulnessA Conversation with Bongani Kona10. Anywhere, USA: Aramco’s Housing in Saudi Arabia’s DesertDalal Musaed Alsayer11. The White Sea Canal and the Rhetorical Desertification of KareliaAlla Vronskaya12. Architecture Adrift in the Antarctic DesertTimothy Hyde13. Observatoire des armements

[Deserts Are Not Empty] is a terrific compilation of essays that allow us to rethink how the desert has been transformed from an actual condition to an idea in service of extractive politics.