Rifat Chadirji, known as the father of modern Iraqi architecture, died late Friday in the United Kingdom after contracting the novel coronavirus, friends and Iraqi officials have said.
The 93-year-old architect and photographer is credited with designing some of Iraq’s most well-known structures, including the iconic “Freedom Monument” in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square -- until recently the hub of protest against the Iraqi political class.
“He was a giant of 20th century Iraq,” said Caecilia Pieri, a scholar focusing on Baghdad’s modern architecture who knew Chadirji well.
“With the death of Rifat Chadirji,” said President Barham Saleh in a statement Saturday, “architecture in Iraq and the world has lost its modern lung.”
Born in Baghdad in 1926, Chadirji studied in London and returned to Iraq in the 1950s to design his magnum opus -- an elegant arch entitled “The Unknown Soldier” -- as well as the capital’s post office and other public buildings.
When the Baathist regime came to power, it tore down “The Unknown Soldier,” replaced it with a statue of Saddam Hussein. Chadirji was imprisoned in the now-notorious Abu Ghraib facility, where he remained for 20 months.
He wrote about the experience in “The Wall Between Two Darknesses,” relating how Saddam had him released from prison to help prepare for an international conference Baghdad was hosting in 1982.
Chadirji moved to Beirut a few years later, living abroad during most of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, the 1990 Gulf War, and a decade of international sanctions and the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam.
When he returned to Iraq in 2009, he was scarred by what he found.
“I cannot believe what has happened to the buildings in Baghdad,” Chadirji said at the time. “Everything has been almost completely destroyed.”
One of his famed structures was Mosul’s seven-storey National Insurance Company building. Built in 1969, the NIC building was seen as a prime example of Iraqi modernism, with rows of slim archways and projected windows reminiscent of Iraq’s beloved “shanasheel.”
During Daesh’s 28-month occupation of the city (2014-16), it is said gunmen would take men who’d been accused of being gay to the roof of the NIC and throw them to their deaths. The structure was ravaged by the months-long fight to oust Daesh from Mosul and a municipal committee later decided to demolish what was left of it, saying it could not be restored.
The building was razed in 2019.
Chadirji had been a longtime advocate of preservation, working even under Saddam to halt the demolition of traditional Iraqi architecture in Baghdad.
“A people that cannot take care of its creations,” he said in 2009, “is a people without a memory.”