Paper short abstract:

This paper observes how an Israeli architect mediates between military and civilian futures, when building bomb shelters in homes. It considers the different expectations of modernity and future intersecting, as shelters solidify the infrastructure of war and Occupation within Israeli homes.

Paper long abstract:

Bomb shelters are ubiquitous in Israel. Part of a state-mandated national infrastructure that continuously remembers and anticipates warfare, shelters 'entify' (Krupa and Nugent 2015: 31) an Israeli temporality in which future and security are only sustainable through conflict (Virilio 1975). Between wars, shelters are used as junk rooms, spare rooms, children's bedrooms, community spaces, etc. This contributes to an 'Israeli ontology' in which war and the everyday are synthesised, and periods of exceptional conflict made routine (Shapiro and Bird-David 2016). In the home, shelters allow quotidian interaction with war's infrastructure. This holds scope for contemplating the hidden and intimate spaces in which political subjectivities and the sensing of Israeli time are crystalized.

Drawing on ethnographic research on Israel's northern borders between 2012 and 2014, this paper approaches the juncture of infrastructure and temporality emboldened by shelters. Examining how a local architect absorbs stringent regulations surrounding the mandatory building of shelters in private homes into her creative practice, it observes how the spectre of 'audit' (Strathern 2000) haunts her work.

The architect is employed to materialise aspirations for modern suburban living and affluent futures. However, as the region is situated on a military front line, the homes she builds must include shelters adhering to stringent and ever-changing regulations. This repeatedly interrupts her client's visions. The paper charts how the architect mediates between the competing aspirations for the secure future that 'hinge' (Pedersen and Nielsen 2013) around the shelter, as well as the temporalities concretised when infrastructure comes home.