UN Buffer Zone - Rebuilding No Man's Land

The United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus, is a demilitarised zone patrolled by the UN Peacekeeping Force that spans the full length of the island from west to east and covers an area of around 350km². Although accounting for only around 3% of the island's total area the UN Zone has turned into a separate geopolitical entity of its own that will potentially be playing a vital political and economical role in a future reunification of the island’s north and south parts.

The Visiting School will draw from the results of the “No Man’s Land Project” workshop (held in 2010) on the unique urban condition of the abandoned city of Famagusta and will be based on the hypothetical event of the return of the confiscated land and villages inside the Buffer Zone back to their former proprietors, following a 38-year period of abandonment.

The main agenda will be to explore how digital tools can address the conflicting nature of the Zone on an urban scale and explore non-linear scenarios of enabling its targeted rehabilitation. Participants will be creating parametric systems that use as input efficiently quantified data such as land parcelling, transportation routes or built growth, along with non-quantifiable elements such as collective memory or regional or ethnic tension.