A Mediterranean Lesson for Contemporary Architecture

2014

Haven’t we the obligation to preserve and pass on the cultural memory which is conveying intangible sense and values that are so indispensable to every living society? Is not there any alternative for conserving our architectural heritage expressing shared universal values? On such point of view, the earthen architecture should not be essential to this protection and passing on of our inherited cultural, bio and techno-diversity? So, it should be upon the indisociable triptych “conservation-sustainable development-modernity” that could raise a “vision” for a recreated future of the earthen architecture useful for the coming out of more viable societies generating new specific as diverse equilibriums between “men”, their environment and their culture. We have to take better knowledge and more understanding of this “building intelligence” and go on updating, enriching our cultural legacy by a more appropriate use of our potentials. But, in the same time, we have to be careful to not b...

Architectural Histories, 2024

How can two different Mediterraneans be treated as one: both the temporal level of things that have been done and produced in the Mediterranean area as a lived space, and the temporal level of things that have been said and written about it—its scholarly re-imagination? The different approaches to researching, writing about, and practicing architecture in a physically concrete region that has been continuously reimagined in scholarly discourse have led to this Special Collection, titled ‘The Two Mediterraneans that Live Apart, Together: Making Architectures and Writing Histories’. Written both as a prologue and an epilogue to the four papers featured in this Special Collection, this editorial essay offers fresh perspectives on the region and its strong global connectivities throughout history. Together with the papers that it introduces, the editorial ventures into the ambiguously constructed yet curiously pervasive category of Mediterranean architecture, while attempting to dismantle the established categories and convictions that has hitherto defined it in Western scholarly discourse. Overall, the main goal is to present just a glimpse of how architectural and urban historians across the Mediterranean and/or of the Mediterranean dwell on the diverse local knowledges produced in each place and period, critically resituating the Mediterranean both as a ‘real’ and an ‘imagined’ sea of global interconnectedness.

CAUMME 2012, Global Impacts and Local Challenges, Proceedings, 2012

The modern way of living alienated us from natural environment, cultural, historical and traditional heritage as well from other people. Contemporary materialistic spirit and way of living imposed a sense of existence and had an essential impact on the architecture. This sequence of events had a series of consequences that we feel with more and more intensity, and then we become aware of the necessity of a change in thinking and behavior. Construction in accordance with the immediate and present context minimizes negative impacts on the environment which becomes imperative to explore and should seek for. Maturation of the idea of harmonious and sustainable building is possible through a research of the traditional construction in the past with modern treatment and positive findings from the present. With its appearance modern architecture has brought revolutionary changes in the understanding of what house should provide to the user by insisting on transparency, sunshine, open plan, organization and orientation of space. Quality achievements of modern architecture in many cases lean on purity of forming, rationalism and functionality of vernacular traditions of the Mediterranean. According to stated facts, contextualization of contemporary architecture in the Mediterranean can be based on the philosophy of modern design with compliance of the all specifics of every particular location followed by principles of ecological sustainability. The paper use studies of relevant authors and thoughts of famous architects to affirm contextual thinking and find their establishments in a numerous of recent examples some of which are presented in this study.

her graduation thesis, she has studied the principles at the basis of the identity of Mediterranean traditional built environments, as well as the reasons that have led to the loss of this identity. On this research she has based her doctoral thesis and her most recent publications. arch. Alessandra Scarano Di. Pro. A. A.

Ripam_3, 2008

"The landscape of Mediterranean area is object of daily interest starting from the devastations caused by urbanity and the great migratory movement of people. It brings to a real need to re-envision the relationship between man and his environment through a new sensibility toward terrain and people way of life. If we look back in the past, we can recognize a ground with deep natural and artificial engravings as a faithful witness: here man has been forced to work hard to survive because of a climate constantly changing and of a terrain too tough to be transformed. The evolution of this landscape tells us the history of cultures gathered around this area: as most of plant species where imported during centuries then becoming typical, different populations took possession of the main land working the same ground and changing the natural aspect of what is perceived. Obviously we have to consider landscape both as cultural and physical: the Renaissance’s perspective view, the first representation of an organized space, displayed an artificial landscape as manifestation of human attitudes. It is impossible to consider physical conditions apart from the cultural meanings they sustain. As a matter of fact the origin of the adjective Mediterraneus means an opposition to maritimus, and during the Roman Empire it identified the territory of the continent. As Fernando Ribeiro points out, the unity of the Mediterranean area is not referred to the sea but to the environment, the physical characters, the nature of the ground and includes a vast territory from the Lusitania to the Maghreb. Here we can recognize a nature in constant transformation during the centuries as a collective work of art produced by humanity. This link between man and his land has been often negated in modern times. This paper aims to point out a critical approach to topographical qualities of a place as a heritage of human actions. The idea of Mediterranean in architecture was defined at first by Le Corbusier, in opposition with the gothic architecture from the north: anyway Ignasi de Sola-Morales notes an interest focused by nature to a Mediterranean classic idea. But Pedrag Matvejevic warns: the identity of being blurs the identity of doing. For him the burden of the past and the myth has to be overcome. In the Second Post-War Period Mediterranean tradition was regarded in a new way: less formal or plastic, focused over the relationships between forms and functions and between building and urban space by the interest to vernacular architecture: the abstraction of the Modern Movement is overcome by a physical approach with materials and phenomenological core for a more human architecture. This apparent conformity with traditional buildings is overtaken, as Sigfried Geidion noticed, by the use of new materials and new productions methods; the affirmation of a new aesthetic as a new emotional expression; the study of the climate of living. In what follows meanings of this kind are introduced in consideration of Dimitris Pikionis, Fernando Távora and Giovanni Michelucci’s works during the ’50 and the ’60. They represent a third way between the International Style and the Vernacularism to face the fails of Modern Movement and the reconstruction of an identity after the war. This research do not consider individual forms but try to remark the all-embracing factors that a Mediterranean site offers for a contemporary space conception. The overcoming of perspective view in behalf of the use of sections, plans and front views is a primary mode of eidetic imaging. By eschewing a prosaic representation of the aesthetic landscape, field of interest is for all the expression of utilitarian demands that form the landshaft. Indeed vertical section allows the knowledge of the site: it controls natural elements, the transformation of the terrain, the essence of materials to forge, the creation of platform and roofs. This allows a great continuity between interior and exterior, as Pompei ruins suggest. Orographic definition imposes deformations and addictions to a planimetric design raised from typical Mediterranean house (from Cnosso palace to vernacular country houses). It creates a sequence of spaces in times by the movement of the subject that uses the topographical memory for orientation. A great representative power is done by surfaces endowed with pictorial representation with narrative values recalling traditional human works as collective memory and emotional needs. New and old materials have to be used for their evocative and communicative shade accordingly to the landscape. This paper evokes a heritage of Mediterranean architecture by acts of making. It examines how some experiences during the ’50 and ’60 enrich the debate over regionalism and vernacularism with new concepts of place, space and tectonics. "

Journal of Mediterranean Cities, 2021

Embracing a geographic reality that connects the East to the West, and the North to the South, the Mediterranean basin is a melting pot of landscape diversity, which embodies equally distinct cultures, languages, behaviours, creeds, and many other identity traits, intercrossed in a shared History. But above all plurality, is it possible to identify a unity in the approach to the act of inhabiting, of architecting – in an etymological sense of building, of creating Man’s place – landscape and, consequently and intrinsically, housing, through processes that, albeit formally apart, are very close in essence? Through the analysis of different authors, with different approaches – from Braudel’s historiography to the traveling impressionism of Matvejevitch, through Orlando Ribeiro’s passionate but thorough scrutiny – we will try to reveal a transversal inhabitance genius, not confined to a determined loci, in search of that which translates a wider ethos: the Mediterranean.

2023

The Mediterranean is a whole world in miniature. This true cliché, hardly applicable in any other region on earth, is substantiated by a unique combination of geomorphological characteristics, historical trajectories, and artistic accomplishments, as well as philosophical, political, and scientific breakthroughs among others. A rich variety in the physical environment has been matched by the development of distinct yet intensely interacting cultures over time within a relatively small geographical space. Source of endless archetypes, the Mediterranean has launched a new school of historical thought through Fernand Braudel which explored how the physical environment influenced the civilizations that emerged in the shores of this sea through time. More recently, the geographical thought has proposed terms of theoretical analysis like ‘urban spontaneity’ and ‘Mediterranean cultural geography’ to account for facets and theoretical as well as experiential ways of conceiving the spatial in this intricate world. The international conference Diachronic Artistic and Spatial Convergences and Divergences in the Mediterranean, organized by the Module Art - Architecture - Urban Planning and the MA Art - Cultural Heritage - Development Policies, both of the Hellenic Open University, purports to explore some of the aspects of cultural interactions in the Mediterranean world, conceived as both the sea and the lands surrounding it, through time seen as continuum. Emphasis is placed on artistic, architectural, planning, archaeological, and spatial dimensions of these interactions. Conference themes -Art, architecture and planning in the Mediterranean through time. Styles, particular features, formal, vernacular, and impromptu creations. -Geographical features, landscape, memory, and artistic process in the Mediterranean. -Artistic traces of converging or clashing cultures and their eponymous or anonymous representatives in the Mediterranean. -Classical myth and the arts in the Mediterranean. -Aesthetically oriented theoretical dialogues in the Mediterranean. Geographies of travel and/for the arts. -20th and 21st c. and present artistic interactions between the Mediterranean and the global: Orientalism, modernity, postmodernity. -Processes of exchange during the beginning of modernity, starting from the 16th c. -What and where was the Renaissance in regard to appropriations and interpretations of Byzantium and the East. -Edward Said’s Orientalism and cultures of travel: The present narratives. Eastern art and architecture as Western history of art and architecture. -Post-war cultural dynamism of the USA as the new ‘Western’ frontier of art and art history.

2022

The paper proposes a historical analysis of the relationship between archaeological remains of Mesopotamian architecture and its modern interpretation as images. The analysis begins with the study of the informative nature of the graphic documentation of Mesopotamian ruins published between the 19th and 20th centuries and focuses on the role of architectural reconstructions in disseminating knowledge and cultural prejudices. Contradicting the oft abused concept of the modern reception of ancient motives, selected case studies will reveal the impact that 19th- and 20th-century architecture (and architectural studies) had on both archaeological drawings and the academic interpretation of ancient Mesopotamian architecture. The profoundly biased mediation between architectural remains and architectural images will come to the fore in light of the key role that some archaeologists, architects and intellectuals had in interlacing architectural forms and aesthetic meanings. This also speaks to the aesthetic power of architectural forms to evoke ancient and modern cultural identities re-creating a NOWHERE (ancient Near) East as a stage ‘on demand’.

Villes Minières | Mining Cities, 2019