MARK WASUITA, AKRAM ZAATARI, ‘Rifat Chadirji: Building Index’
RIFAT CHADIRJI: BUILDING INDEX
Size: 23.50 x 32.12 cm
Pages: 420
Published by Kaph Books and the Arab Image Foundation
Prolific and prominent architect Rifat Chadirji (1926 - 2020) launched his office Iraq Consult in Baghdad in the late 1950s.
In fewer than twenty years, his design output reached almost 100 buildings, ranging from monuments and private residences to governmental and industrial buildings in Iraq and the Gulf Region. An avid photographer, Chadirji extensively documented his own architectural projects and the shifting image of Baghdad. Despite his fame, in the climate of suspicion that dominated a policed Iraq, Chadirji was jailed in 1978. He was released two years later and eventually left Iraq in 1983 to devote himself to writing and to cataloguing his works. Chadirji’s photographs appear on the sheets that form his building index—published for the first time in this book.
The index is both a scrupulous inventory of his building career and a testimony to its sudden end.