Architectures of Unjust Enrichment
When regimes collapse, they don’t just leave a vacuum of power, their cracks expose the wealth of those who used to be in power.
The fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 has ushered Syria into a new era. While there is hope for a new political reality on the ground, the mechanisms of wealth accumulation and corruption of the previous regime are still visible in the built and natural environment.
The Architectures of Unjust Enrichment investigates, through a spatial lens, how private and corporate actors connected to Syria’s Assad regime unfairly accumulated wealth and power.
Through this spatial analysis, the project aims to uncover some of these mechanisms, while contributing techniques and methodologies to Syrian transitional justice efforts1.
Our chosen Perspectives
We started looking at a broad set of areas with observable unjust enrichment and decided to focus on three distinct perspectives as entry points:
Unjust Reconstruction
Checkpoints as Mode of Extraction
Flows of Power, Cargoes of Control
This project approaches these areas of unjust enrichment by looking at emerging evidence, their patterns and how they manifest spatially.