jon, as a sidenote, you have probably thought of this, but Virilio was very keen on 'bunker archeology'.

His 'oblique function' of architecture stems from his works examining thousands of German seaside bunkers. 'Oblique function' is a kind of postfordist archiecture that seeks to overcome the 'horizontal plane' of traditional architecutre and the 'vertical plane' of modernist architecture. He sought to use gravity as a motor like a ship with sails uses the wind.

I imagine the 'pillbox architecture' of the Americans would be a rough equivalent of the German architecture that Virilio studied.

So, not to answer your question, but following this, to address it in a certain fashion, wouldn't it be necessary to separate the arrangements of space of world war 2 from the arrangements of space for the pirates in terms of the 'speeds' that were capable in both eras? That is, the the different resonances of the fortifications would literally be architectural sedimentations ('architecture' thought in the broadest sense as arrangements of space and movement) of various 'speeds' throughout the eras?
Glen | Homepage | 20 Mar, 2006 - 4:37 pm | #

Glen, indeed, and more than that: it would be worth charting the various interactions from the sixteenth century onwards between pirates and other threats on the one hand, of different speeds and with different tactics, and the architects of Empire on the other.

We might indeed read this history sedimented in colonial architecture throughout the Americas, and perhaps draw out the diagram of imperial power and the lines of flight that traverse it.

Plus of course the recreations of such edifices in the service of the tourist economy today.

More on this, much more, anon...
Jon | Homepage | 20 Mar, 2006 - 5:01 pm | #