Urbicide Mosul. Triggers for Reconstruction.

Benno Albrecht, Jacopo Galli

URBICIDE TASK FORCE

RECONSTRUCT — SENSITIVE EMPLOYMENT CREATION THROUGH BOTTOM-UP CELLULAR STRATEGY

URBICIDE MOSUL TRIGGERS FOR RECONSTRUCTION

URBICIDE MOSUL TRIGGERS FOR RECONSTRUCTION Urbicide Task Force, UniversitĂ Iuav di Venezia

edited by Benno Albrecht, Jacopo Galli a project by Urbicide Task Force Benno Albrecht, Emilio Antoniol, Andrea Fantin, Jacopo Galli, Marco Marino, Giulia Piacenti, Tania Sarria, Chiara Semenzin, Elisa Vendemini, Rossella Villani architectural design by Federica Bresin, Serena Bolzan, Filippo Cracco, Giorgia Dal Bianco, Matteo De Bernardini, Caterina Delaini, Alessandro Dini, Matilde Dufour, Davide Fabrello, Elisa Franceschetti, Nicolò Genovese, Alessia Giampaolino, Filippo Giancola, Francesco Martini, Sabrina Righi, Andrea Russo, Akira Sato, Marco Santoni, Maria Concetta Savignano, Giulia Simonetto, Giorgia Soini, Giorgio Trivellin, Marco Turcato, Stefano Zugno academic consultancy MariaAntonia Barucco, Massimiliano Scarpa technical consultancy Enrico Guastaroba, Luca Panzeri photos by Umberto Ferro, Luca Pilot

with the participation of FEEM@Iuav Earth | Polis Cluster (EPiC) Benno Albrecht, Francesco Musco, Stefano Pareglio and the support of I Barbon - Shipping and Logistics

Anteferma Edizioni - ISBN 978-88-32050-46-2 Published by Anteferma Edizioni Srl via Asolo 12, Conegliano, TV edizioni@anteferma.it First edition: 2019 Copyright

This work is distributed under Creative Commons License Attribution - Non-commercial - No derivate works 4.0 International

CONTENTS 9

Reconstruction as a sustainable scenario Benno Albrech t

23

Tr i g g ers Ch iara Semenzin

35

The neighborhood and its proximity Giu lia Piacenti

47

Middle East and new regionalisms. Rifat Chadirji, social technology and reconstruction Ros sella Villani

59

MODELS

93

Decentrali sation, a fi rst p rop os a l J aco po Galli

105

The Torres patent for A s ei sm i c b u i l di n gs.

The original reconstru c t i o n o f M es s i n a after the ear thquake of 1 9 0 8 Marco Marino

119

Rebui l d with rubbl e Em ilio Anto nio l

129

MOSUL THEMATIC ATLAS

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C A SE S TUD IES M OSU L —

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EVOLUTIVE DEVICES

ARCHEOLOGICAL TRACES URBAN SYNTAX

RESOURCE DRIVEN DENSITY

PUBLIC HIERARCHY PRODUCTIVE OROGRAPHY

— 6 —

NEIGHBOURHOOD PERMEABILITY

BORDERS REDEFINITION

B enno Alb recht, Jacop o Galli

- ARCHEOLOGICAL TRACES

INFORMAL STRUCTURE

Serena Bolzan, Caterina Delaini, Giulia Simonetto

- RESOURCE-DRIVEN DENSITY

Federica Bresin, Giorgia Dal Bianco

- BORDERS REDEFINITION - INFORMAL STRUCTURE

Matteo De Bernardini, Elisa Franceschetti, Maria Concetta Savignano

- NEIGHBOURHOOD PERMEABILITY

Alessandro Dini, Nicolò Genovese, Marco Turcato

- PRODUCTIVE OROGRAPHY Matilde Dufour, Alessia Giampaolino

- PUBLIC HIERARCHY Davide Fabrello, Sabrina Righi, Andrea Russo

- EVOLUTIVE DEVICES

Francesco Martini, Akira Sato, Stefano Zugno

- URBAN SYNTAX

Marco Santoni, Giorgia Soini, Giorgio Trivellin

— 7 —

Case S tu d ies Mosu l

Filippo Cracco, Filippo Giancola

Rossella V illani

Middle East and new regionalisms.

Rifat Chadirji, social technology and reconstruction —

In the context of the post-war scenario that characterizes the entire Middle East, it’s important to start from the criticism of the post-modern and post-colonial architecture in order to generate new and important strategies with a strong identity, that can be circumscribed to regions, urban areas and neighborhoods. A new form of critical regionalism1 must be able to interpret the contexts of the recent conflict.

Traditional construction techniques, the specificity of places, memories and expressive forms typical of the history of the Middle Eastern communities, must detach from contemporary global homologation.

A paradox2 already expressed by Paul Ricoeur arises between aspiration to the modern and return to the sources, in a framework of hoped renaissance of destroyed civilizations. An alternative design approach to regionalisms3 must have as its primary objective the minimization of environmental impact, through the use of sustainable technologies and materials — 47 —

1 — Frampton Kenneth, “Anti tabula rasa: verso un Regionalismo critico”, in Casabella, n. 500, March 1984, p. 22.

2 — Ricoeur Paul, “History and Truth”, Northwestern University Press, 1965, p. 16.

3 — Liane Lefraine, Alexander Tzonis, “Critical Regionalism: Architecture and identity in a globalized world”, Prestel Publisher, 2003.

— On the previous page: Borders Redefinition, F. Cracco, F. Giancola.

Midd le East an d n ew region alisms

R ossella Villani

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4 — United Nations Charter, San Francisco, June 26th 1945.

5 — Aarts Paul, “The Middle East: A Region without Regionalism or the End of Exceptionalism?”, Third World Quarterly, vol. 20, n. 5, Taylor & Francis, 1999.

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6 — Vitruvius, “De Architectura”, Book VI, ch. 1. vol. 2, London, 1973.

7 — Frampton Kenneth, “Modern Architecture: A Critical History”, Thames & Hudson The world of art library, London, 1980.

— On the next page: Informal Structure, M. De Bernardini, E. Franceschetti, M. Savignano.

with respect to the climate and places. Post-war reconstruction must consider local lifestyles to adapt the oldest morphological and constructive inventions, in relation to a strong need of change, that seeks a new cultural morph, through a strategy that mediates between anthropocentrism and resources.

This is an interdisciplinary method that can inevitably self-interrogate and self-examine the forms of economic regionalism4, that in the MENA region sees extreme urgency in dealing with spatial inequality. Suffering and marginalization with respect to resources must pay attention to new models, capable of redistributing capital by facing territorial disparities and internal social tensions. This regional coordination of resources in the Middle East has already emerged in the past with centralized control during the colonial period by international companies, which had justified requests to maintain more revenue at the local level. However, when national identity and cohesion proved weak, the communities that lived within the resources were interested in conserving more wealth in an attempt to remedy their political and economic resentments by applying the logic of nationalism in a more restricted regional context.

This micro-regionalism expressed the need to build first of all institutions in a Middle East often described as a region without regionalism5, a fundamental challenge that can attempt to break the old cycle of water, energy, mining and biological resources to stabilize the economic and political situation and avoid that sources can become again, easy target for tensions and future conflicts.

The reciprocity between resources and space, social fabric and urban fabric already made explicit in the past by Vitruvius in De Re Arquitectura6, in a form of regionalist design strongly linked to political implications, is a form of architecture of resistance7 that re— 48 —

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8 — Zaatari Akram, Wasiuta Mark, “Rifat Chadirji: Building Index”, Kaph Books and the Arab Image foundation, Beirut, 2018.

— On the next page: Public Hierarchy, D. Fabrello, S. Righi, A. Russo.

lease itself from vernacular sentimentalism to reveal the local, ecological and geographical conditions through the community that inhabits it.

In this reasoning Rifat Chadirji, important Iraqi architect of the Twentieth century, explains how social need and social technology are rationalized, satisfying the emerging cultural intention of regionalizing international architecture. The creation of architecture will no longer be generated by blind necessity as in the past, but by the reasonable knowledge of the main characteristics that make sustainable social and technological needs interact.

The general trend of the universalization of various aspects of cultures as a direct result of industrial production and universalization, contradicts the desire for the preservation and continuity of ancient culture. This desire has become a conscious cultural intention in the processes of architectural creation for Chadirji. Like the case of the three residences8 A.S. Azzawi, F. Shanshal and A. Arif Aga (1963-64) that interpret, according to the traditional 19th century house north of Baghdad, the neo-brutalist villa that Le Corbusier had built in the elegant Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Sein for the Jaoul family in 1954.

A type of contamination that with slabs, terraces and modern musharabiyye in concrete draws traditional volumes with load-bearing brick walls. One of the housing projects where regionalism most of all loses some of the characteristics of its single isolation, becoming itself the founder of international culture, generating a value of change in the universal. There are many architectures that are representative of the dichotomy between rationalism and historical art like the Y.Rafiq house which, following the powerful towers of the Ukraidir Palace, draws on the four fronts of the courtyard house, a rhythm of brick niches and towers emphasized by the arches as the windows of — 50 —

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9 — Chadirji Rifat, “Concepts and Influences: Towards a regionalized international architecture”, KPI, London, 1986.

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10 — Lewis Mumford, “Technics and Civilisation”, Peter Smith Pub, London, 1984.

11 — Chadirji Rifat, “Architectural Education in Iraq: a case study, In Architectural Education in the Islamic World”, edited

by Ahmet Evin, proceedings of Seminar Ten in the series “Architectural Transformations in the Islamic World”, held in Granada, Spain, April 21-25th, 1986.

— On the next page: Evolutive Devices, F. Martini, A. Sato, S. Zugno.

a traditional house in Ashar, south of Basrah. Or Villa A. Hamood which imitates the old Mesopotamian mudhif. “I set out to learn from traditional architecture,” he once said, “and to achieve a synthesis between traditional forms and inevitable advent of modern technology. My aim was to create an architecture which at once acknowledges the place in which it is built, yet which sacrifices nothing to modern technical capability”9. Although at first glance Rifat Chadirji may seem only an careful historicist, his will to tell The South in Architecture10 is especially expressed in the reconstruction of Baghdad, in the redefinition of his post-war image, in the cataloging and documentation of Iraqi architecture. It is a work in which Rifat expresses and reveals a universal criticism.

Describes and documents through photography, the violent juxtaposition and opposition of diverse and volatile Middle Eastern cultures, during the 1960s oil boom. It does this by illustrating the deterioration of the architecture and the construction industry caused by the outbreak of the Second World War and during the revolution that continued until 1958.

There are five points11 that the Iraqi architect illustrates in his discussion for the seminar Architectural Transformations in the Islamic World, concerning the crisis of technological identity and social culture and their mutual needs. Importing new materials to Baghdad had triggered new technologies without any prior testing on local buildings, speeding up a process that the locals weren’t ready for, moreover the industrial expansion of bricks, cement and metal windows had not involved the local craftsmanship; consequently the modern management plans had not taken into account the Iraqis in the creation of new technologies, in a schedule that turned out to be inappropriate. The last two points instead concern the trades, one denounces the isolation of the Iraqi academics, — 52 —

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who despite having obtained a wide formal recognition had been removed from the productive realities, the other, highlighted the deterioration of the abilities of the engineers and of local master builders.

This analysis and its principles can be an instrument of investigation and design for contemporary residential architecture, and for the management of possible reconstruction scenarios also in Mosul.

The study and documentation of Iraqi reconstruction highlights new possibilities for architects to foresee their projects from a critical perspective. Chadirji’s lesson highlights the possibility of generating an architecture of excellence at any time only starting from a social need, corresponding to its own social technology that is expressed in utilitarian, symbolic and aesthetic values, and that today inevitably must also respond to sustainability objectives.

— On the next pages: Neighbourhood Permeability, A. Dini, N. Genovese, M. Turcato; Borders Redefinition, F. Cracco, F. Giancola.

— 54 —

novembre 2019 PRESS UP Roma

URBICIDE MOSUL TRIGGERS FOR RECONSTRUCTION Mosul, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, has been subjected to large scale destructions that fully display the complexity involved in the reconstruction of large contemporary metropolises. The historical core, the archeological area of Niniveh, the middle income neighbourhoods, the large scale industrial areas and the ecological system of the Tigri river represent a series of challenges to be faced with multiple strategies tailored on the specific needs of each area. The proposed projects have been produced within the Master Thesis Laboratory dedicated to the topic of reconstruction directed by Benno Albrecht at Iuav and represent the physical display of the conceptual approach presented in the texts.

with the participation of FEEM@Iuav Earth | Polis Cluster (EPiC)

the support of I Barbon - Shipping and Logistics

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