مختارات من عمارة العالم العربي 1914-2014 (ص 156)

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مختارات من عمارة العالم العربي 1914-2014 (ص 156)

المحتوى

DYO SUNLOALIHOUV-GVYV MMM LV 310171060 GNNO4G SI 3518110 3041 [\]
Introductory remarks
Selecting one hundred buildings in a century from twenty two
countries that spread over a large territory is without a doubt
a challenging task. A team was put together for the selection,
and contributed with essays defining major issues that architec-
tural production faced and responded to. The opportunity
unraveled several findings that are useful to present here. First
is the dire need for grounded, documented, substantiated and
precise research on architecture in the Arab world. Second is
the discovery that, although archiving and documentation are not
well-established endeavors, some archives do exist, scattered,
untreated and awaiting action. Third, regarding content, we are
reminded — once again—how revealing architecture is of the ethos
of time and place. The century seems to have taken us full circle,
back to fundamentals, and not surprisingly is forcing us into
new beginnings.
At atime when the Arab world is in turmoil, reinventing itself
by choice, subjected once again to external interventions, or driven
towards religious fundamentalism, it is enlightening to look back
at the past century. Already initiated in the second half of the
19th century during Ottoman rule, Arab nationalism and the notion
of Pan-Arabism developed in the 20th century. Accompanied
by modernization, the concept went through several phases
of expectation, realization, disenchantment, and associated
questioning. The various essays of this publication make manifest
the architectural vicissitudes which were often concomitant
with political conditions.
Arab cities were not always tied in their fate, although they all
vibrated at times with the same aspirations. The spotlight moved
from Cairo, Baghdad, and Beirut to Dubai and other places.
Furthermore, many cities flourished benefiting from hardships of
other cities undergoing war and turbulence. It is therefore judicious
to ask: what, beyond the Arabic language, ties the Arab world
together. The answer will not come from architecture alone; the
exercise of putting together these examples clearly demonstrates
that. Far from aiming to be an exhaustive catalogue or even
an undisputable selection, this collection is an opportunity for
fortuitous encounters displayed across the pages of the book.
We have mostly highlighted buildings that pertain to the issue
of public identity construction, of representation, and of nation
building. We also favored the presentation of buildings for which
drawings and sketches were available, in order to emphasize the
idea of vision and authorship, and also call for the preservation
of archives and the documentation of architectural material.
We excluded unbuilt projects from the selection, hoping to prepare
a publication on the unbuilt Arab world, a designation that says
as much about architecture as about statehood. What could not
feature in this book will be documented in an online database that
will expand continuously. "!
It is a fact that several of the major buildings in the Arab world
—from Iraq, to Mauritania in the Maghreb, passing by the Arabian
Peninsula, the Mashreq, Egypt and Arab East Africa—were designed
by foreigners who came with the colony, the mandate and other
protectorates. The absence of locally trained professionals
made this possible and several countries waited a long time before
launching local engineering and architecture programs. Although
with various levels of intensity, the model of the foreign architect
marking the territory with landmark projects prevailed. It is for
that matter still widespread, reinforced now by globalization.
In contrast with some quickly concocted “regional” recipes
sometimes legitimized by foreign expertise, many attentive local
or foreign professionals designed in response to time and place.
In the past century, Architecture theorists and historians were
not many in the Arab World. In reality, the Arab library of Architecture,
for the most part, is made of books and essays written by practic-
ing architects who wrote about their own work in order to convey
their ideas: Hassan Fathy with his Building for the Poor, Saba
Shiber in his many pamphlets, Sayed Karim with Majallat al-Imara,
Rifat Chadirji with Al-Ukhaidir Wal Qasr Al-Bellawri (a crucial
work on Iraq, awaiting translation into English), Mohammad Makiya,
Antoine Tabet and others. It is timely to read those seminal texts;
the questions they raised early on about locale, identity, tradition,
contemporaneity, appropriateness and economic-social-environ-
mental sustainability remain valid ones. Recent architecture tends
to favor environmental response over the debate of style. As we
are looking back at the previous century, we realize that modernism
was not as careless as it was portrayed, nor were all architects
then concerned primarily with style. Before sustainable design
was coined as such, many architects designed soundly, learning
from earlier traditions while sometimes pushing the boundaries.
The often sterile debate opposing the traditional and the modern
can only be resolved if we consider tradition to be a compilation
of modernisms over time.
Those recurrent questions, as well as the pressing ones related
to housing, the environment and the globalization of culture, are
to be debated. The Arab Center for Architecture hopes to take
part in that debate as a platform for thinking about architecture in
the Arab world. Participating at the Venice Biennale of Architecture
was possible thanks to our host, the Kingdom of Bahrain, which
entrusted us with the installation and publication for its third
participation after two successful ones. This is a milestone towards
making our mission more operative.
George Arbid

هو جزء من

مختارات من عمارة العالم العربي 1914-2014

تاريخ

2014

المنشئ

جورج عربيد