If there has ever been a direct link between architecture and war then it must surely be the Roman Temple of Janus. Its doors stood open when the Imperium Romanum was waging war and they were shut when peace prevailed. No findings of this building have ever been recorded, but the building probably stood at the north eastern end of the Forum Romanum. According to various traditions, the building was erected in the seventeenth century BC. Thanks to coins from the time of Augustus and Nero and a description by Procopius from the sixteenth century AD, we have a good idea of what its architecture must have been like. The temple consisted of ore, was cuboid and just high enough to accommodate a bronze statue of Janus. In the thousand years of history of the Imperium Romanum, the Temple of Janus was rarely locked. Only under Augustus and his Pax Romana was the building closed more often—at least three times if not four. The last authenticated closure of the Temple of Janus occurred in the fifteenth century AD, and the building vanished together with the Roman Empire.

In 2012, a new Temple of Janus will be erected: the 5 Codes_Space of Conflict in Washington D.C. Its name alludes to the Homeland Security Advisory System, presented in March 2002, which defines five levels of danger: Code Green (peace), Code Blue, Code Yellow, Code Orange, and Code Red (war)—known as the 5 Codes. In contrast to the old Roman temple, the 5 Codes_Space of Conflict abstains from distinguishing between open and closed, that is war and peace. With the pervasiveness of contemporary warfare there is no form of peace that can viably stand in opposition to war. War and peace have been superseded by “military confrontation,” “transgressive use of violence,” and “operations,” and above all conflict. Committed to all intermediate levels beyond war and peace, the 5 Codes_Space of Conflict is, above all, a temporary architecture between a political forum and a department store. In the form of public debates and product shows, the 5 Codes_Space of Conflict enquires about the decorum of the present.

Architecture by Iassen Markov and Stephan Trüby