How this archive began ?

It all started with an ordinary stroll through Google Maps.

Out of simple curiosity, we began to look up the old addresses of the closed institutions. What we found left us stunned.

We noticed that a closed university hospital was now the provincial headquarters of a political party. At another address, the building of a media outlet that had broadcast for years had been turned into a courthouse. And the headquarters of an international aid organization, we saw, had become a district police directorate.

The buildings were still standing. But the name, the record and the memory of the institution inside them had been taken away. It was as if it had never existed there at all.

First, a list

To keep from forgetting what we saw that day, we began to write it down. We wrote the name of a closed school. Then a hospital, an association and a dormitory were added. As the list grew, we saw that behind every line there was not a building but the story of hundreds of people. Some had studied there, some had worked there, some had been healed there.

Turning the list into an archive

We decided to turn our list into an archive. We wanted every institution to have its own page: when it was founded, what it lived through, when it was closed, and what stands at that address today.

This page is that first list, grown larger. We are here to document. The fact that something else now rises in an institution's place does not mean that institution never existed. We exist to put that on the record.