Week 4 Reading
Our next class will be Wednesday September 24, at either 9:30 am or 2 pm (HHS 210).
I need a volunteer or two from the afternoon class to present the reading for this week. Please email me if you can do this and I'll give you instructions. Remember, you have to sign up for at least one week to do this - better to get it out of the way now.
Reading is as follows:
*Copy Center
Main Building, Lower Level
Joshua Tan, Manager
718.636.3691
8:30 am -4:30 pm Monday-Friday
I need a volunteer or two from the afternoon class to present the reading for this week. Please email me if you can do this and I'll give you instructions. Remember, you have to sign up for at least one week to do this - better to get it out of the way now.
Reading is as follows:
- Gwendolyn Wright, selections from The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1991. (Xerox)
- Paul Rabinow, “France in Morocco: Technocosmopolitanism and Middling Modernism” Assemblage 17 (April, 1992): 52-57. (PDF)
- Janet L Abu-Lughod, “The Islamic City – Historic Myth, Islamic Essence, and Contemporary Relevance.” Int’l Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1987): 155-176. (PDF)
- Zeynep Celik, "Gendered Spaces in Colonial Algiers." In Diana Agrest et. al. The Sex of Architecture. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996. (Xerox)
- Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism. (New York: MR, 1972.) (PDF )
*Copy Center
Main Building, Lower Level
Joshua Tan, Manager
718.636.3691
8:30 am -4:30 pm Monday-Friday
posted by Meredith at 9/13/2008 09:59:00 AM
31 Comments:
Last week we debated in class over the power of architects. The architect can plan how people inhabiting residential structures will live their lives by designing specific spaces for particular everyday functions. Architects can design circulation spaces within buildings and urban planners can design street layouts in cities in order for citizens to either cross paths or keep isolated from each other. At a first glance it seems like architects hold powerful and influential positions in our society. Although our readings last week point out and intensify this week that architects and urban planners have some initial power in city planning and the design of social housing complexes, but ultimately the power is in the hands of the inhabitants. In response to the modern attempts to reconstruct Islamic cities Janet L. Abu-Lughod concludes, “…since cities are living processes rather than formalistic shells for living, they cannot be built by us. We can only encourage them to grow in the desired direction” (173).
Gwendolyn Wright describes Centre Mondial, a proposal of a model city designed by Hebrard and Andersen with the goal of world peace in the early 1900s. The intention of the design is to promote “peace and prosperity” and the author uses it as an example of architects incorporating the social and humanistic aspects of a city in their design instead of isolating aesthetics. It is interesting that Wright concludes the section on the World Center by informing the reader, “The only individual to show much enthusiasm for the project during the 1920’s would be the Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini” (65). She reveals the underlying message which is similar to Abu-Lughod’s concept that it is not natural for an entire city to be planned by an individual, alluding to the possible disastrous consequences of the design by having us consider the only individual with persistent interested in the World Center is a totalitarian dictator.
Zeynep Celik gives excellent examples of two architects who designed residential housing complexes with specific intentions that were ultimately reversed by the inhabitants giving the later the ultimate power. Both architects Fernand Pouillon and Roland Simounet designed their social housing complexes with specific spaces for Algerian women to work and socialize, attempting to recreate rooftop levels of old Algerian neighborhoods. Pouillon placed pavilions on rooftops to serve as washhouses, though he designed narrow staircases to the roofs reminiscing stepped streets of old cities, which proved difficult to climb with laundry baskets. Instead women chose to wash laundry in their apartments and hung rods from windows for laundry to dry.
Simounet designed a single room and loggia combination, which was to combine the cultural rooftop terrace and the courtyard and was intended as a living working, recreational space. The vaulted roofs of the complex could not be reached by stair and were not intended for use, but despite inconvenience, women used the rooftops instead of the loggia space. Ultimately, an architect’s position resembles the position of a parent, both can influence and encourage, but at some point the designer and parent must step back and allow the inhabitants or children to take responsibility for the way they live their lives.
I very much agree with Cesaire in “Discourse on Colonialism” that it is truly the colonizer who becomes the uncivilized one throughout the process of colonization that so many countries have partaken in. Cesaire states that “colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact” (35). This control by a “righteous” or more “powerful” class of people is, of course, nothing new and has propagated itself through the ages. Renan states that “we aspire not to equality but to domination. The country of a foreign race must become once again a country of serfs, of agricultural laborers, or industrial workers” (37).This sentiment has been acted upon for centuries and not just through colonization of Non-Western countries but also of colonization in the European countries. During 1066 and the Norman conquest of England, it was William the Conqueror who put the entire country of England under a feudal system of Norman Lords and required the official language to become French. This whole change of culture and harsh ruling was a type of colonization that lasted three hundred years and had a lasting effect on the British culture even to this day. Yet, it would seem that Cesaire would not see this as a type of colonization as both parties are of the same race and are not members of the consistently repeated regions of Africa, Asia, and the Native Americans. It seems to me that this is not a race issue which is portrayed as in the article, but an issue of technology and who has the most powerful weapons, or successful war tactics. It is no secret that every group of people strives for more power and more land and when this does happen the more powerful group’s culture will be forced onto the poorer group. Colonialism is human nature at its most raw and uncivilized regardless of the continent the act is portrayed on.
From this week’s reading, I find the small scale legal system in Moroccan city very fascinating i.e. the neighborhoods function on their own. This brings me a question of what modern world has changed today’s societies’ vernacular systems in relation to power of politics and architecture.
A number of studies had similar comments on the lack of municipal organization in Morocco. France also shared the same opinion by trying to manipulate Morocco’s urban form. In fact, Islamic religion not only encourages a belief system among its people but also creates a systematic city. The gender segregation between the males and females shapes functions of buildings which in turn reinforces the values of the segregation within the residence. As Lughod mentioned, the residential segregation was rarely involuntary. There is no need to create a physical obstruction within the community where everyone is considered an insider. During the decolonization war in Algiers, the rooftops were no longer a private space for females. Men were allowed on them while the French forces were not. Thus, there was this flexibility within the spatial segregation system of the community.
Looking at the Islamic urban plan in comparison to today’s world, we need to put up some sort of physical barrier to clearly mark property lines. We need a regulation to define right and wrong acts. There must be a presence of the police in order to prevent crimes. We have abandoned the traditional ways of managing our community. Modernism creates strategies to judge and control community’s residents via architecture, i.e. the panopticon that tirelessly watches every prisoner’s back in each already enclosed cell.
In my personal opinion, what modernism has done to us is the same as what France did to its colonies. They tried to give the colonial cities a rigid system of urban planning and regulations to, as they claimed, raise the living standards. In today’s world, we have acquired a set of rigid rules to tell us what not to do. We have let the political power in our society take control of our way of life that now we have lost our individual freedom. This relates back to my comment last week on the more privacy we get with the modern world, the less freedom we have. The more dependent we are on those rigid regulations, the less responsible we are of our own community.
While reading the texts for this week, I was struck by one of the underlying threads between them. Each reading is based around the theme that the colonizer has a fundamental misunderstanding of the colonized culture. The conquerors never seem to acknowledge the similarities between the two groups; instead they focus on the differences that keep them at the top of the social structure. I suppose that I had never thought of this colonizer/colonized relationship
in such blunt terms before, but it's much more obvious to me now.
Cesaire takes the most straightforward approach to this argument, comparing colonialism to Nazism in its brutality. He points out that even the most respected French philosophers and teachers were condoning colonization, which, in his opinion, was dehumanizing and poisoning the European people. He takes such a sarcastic tone (which makes for wonderfully entertaining reading, actually) that his points about the Bantu and Madagascans in particular truly hit home.
I find the planning readings especially interesting, though, because the theme of the colonizer/colonized relationship is much more veiled. In these cases, the study of the colonialists' misunderstanding is focused on architects, planners, and researchers. Rainbow takes Michel Ecochard to task for his attempt to apply Modernism to new neighborhoods in Casablanca. It's no surprise that his housing projects didn't succeed - he attempted to force the Moroccan people into a living situation that was incompatible with their culture. In Abu-Lughod's text, she discovers that architects and historians have made gross generalizations about Islamic culture, and the layout of Islamic cities. Historians had merely cited previous incorrect sources, and therefore, an incorrect view of Islamic cities gradually became accepted as fact. It should be shocking that no one before her had bothered to do any deeper research into the subject, or that Western planners did not understand local ways of building. After reading Cesaire's text, though, it almost makes sense. In the colonialist mindset that he outlines, it would have been easy to assume that a colonized culture had no further depth, and did not merit any more research.
Last week, my blog revolved around Foucault’s argument that in light of an architect’s objective of imperative attainment, he/she ultimately renders a failure, producing a need for alteration and leading to “misuse” with the passage of time. Through this week’s readings, I found myself extracting and extrapolating more on the significance of the aspirations of authority of the architect over the future inhabitant of his/her architecture. Rabinow explores this notion of controversy through Michael Ecochard, for instance. Through his design, Ecochard was concerned with what is referred to as universal human necessities, without paying close attention to the variables of the specific society, geography, culture and climate. As a result, mass production of housing with the emphasis of producing quantitatively, not qualitatively, emerged. “Ultimately, like the French inhabitants of Pessac who added flowers in window boxes and colorful curtains to the purity of Le Corbusier’s buildings, the Moroccans proved insufficiently ‘heroic’ to live within the strict scientific standards of universal habitation Ecochard had provided for them. Patios were enclosed to create privacy or to sublet; interior rooms were further subdivided; others were added on top; roofs were transformed into covered spaces where women could retain their respectability while out of doors…”
It is apparent that Ecochard’s neglect of local and regional components, along with the notion of a seemingly preordained power of the architect, led to a massive failure as Foucault or Frampton would have predicted well in advance. I think another important point to make is that through the investigation of architecture in colonized regions, we see dramatic failures because of the lack of roots that the architect and designers have in these nations. In Abu-Lughod’s Islamic City, we see that factors such as municipal organization, relative boundaries, cultural segregation, territorial names, and religious and political reasoning had been in place in certain areas relatively unaltered for centuries. That is quite a unique and remarkable condition; it is therefore understandable why a European colonist will struggle with dissecting what is critical when designing in newly-acquired foreign territories, even if the contemporary conventions applied seem to strive for the betterment of the society. Residential apartheid (gender or ethno-religious related) and climate considerations, for example, will be considerably difficult barriers for architecture to overcome if special attention is not paid to these factors. This is especially true if an architect is fully removed from the site in a way that will disable him/her from understanding the local phenomena.
Finally, in reading Gwendolyn Wright, it is also easy to attribute a great deal of the failure of architecture in then newly-colonized countries as a direct result of blatant ignorance of the designer. Wright explains how it was initially universally agreed upon amongst the Europeans that the nations of peoples of color inherently could not be civilized. As a result, people of color would be treated similarly to those living in poverty in the European home nations at that time; that is, an effort to improve their conditions without really caring or accounting for important regional issues. Improved education and hygiene, for example, were a standard concern of those who were designing for the underprivileged; however as stated above, the understanding of the communities was insufficient and resulted in grave failures. This reminds me of the shortcomings of public housing of the late 1940’s to 1970’s in North American metropolises. Slum clearance, introduction of green/public space, playgrounds, medical and daycare facilities all wrapped in modern design are just a few the elements that on paper seemed to contain groundbreaking accomplishments for the impoverished. However, the mammoth slab towers disrupted the city grids abrasively and they were set back far from the streets, disconnecting these communities from their surroundings in the city. Within the housing complexes, a sense of inferiority was established, and with that, drug abuse, gang membership and other subcultures skyrocketed as an arguably direct result of the poor planning. By having a homogeneous design of no character and sharp right angles, prison-like institutions were being created that were not only isolated, but aesthetically an eyesore that were easily identifiable and which produced a negative label for the inhabitants who dwelled within them.
Colonialism has been a driving force for the urbanization of societies in a "European Fashion". One example of this is the French occupation of Morocco. It is certain that Moroccan cities have developed as a result of cultural and environmental pressures. In "France in Morocco: Techno cosmopolitanism and Middling Modernism" by,Paul Rabinow, modernism and colonialism are questioned on various levels regarding the creating of Muslim cities. Janet L. Abu-Lughod questions a similar topic in, "The Islamic Essence, and contemporary relevance". Lughod, however, looks at Muslim cities in regards to cultural morals. Can urban colonial dominance be superseded by
ancient cultural traditions? Do they mesh into a hybrid-culture?
Rabinow states that colonialism has been "committed in the name of progress:nationalism, civilization, democracy, socialism, welfare"(53). These concepts are often described as progressive and modern. European countries have culturally altered over the centuries. Religion, politics and cultural norms have formed these changes. European nations were imperialistic over African territories in the 19th century. This has formed a hybrid culture where morals and architecture can be in opposition with one another. The planning or cities is directly related to the comfort of the occupants. Religion has a large influence on the morality of people. Arab culture is
one of "community, privacy and beauty"(Lughod 173).The concepts, especially that of male and female privacy, are not are as prevalent in a European-Christian city.
Religion has a vast influence on the success of city planning. Arab cities need an appropriate level of private areas. Women are not to be seen in a similar manner in Muslim areas as they are in Euro-Christian cultures.
Cities are always growing. Populations expand and alter. They constantly proliferate due to a religious core. Lughod alludes to the theory that religion provides a city with an intellectual core. This becomes a central element in which historians, writers, and holy persons study. This theory could be studied with research looking into numerous cultures and weather they contain cities. The argument implies that much commerce is directly a a result of religion. "Near the mosque as a religious center we will find the suppliers of the sanctuaries, the seq of the candle merchants, the dealers in incense and other perfumes"(158).Additional merchants and vendors would be employed by the existence of the mosque, temple or church.Colonialism may have altered the architecture and planning of a city, but religion is a driving force that may have maintain the economies of traditional cities.
Continuing on my thoughts from last week, I still am skeptical of the point of referring to a particular culture to describe some sort of theme or style of architectural manifestation. The introduction of the technocosmopolitanism seems to come close to the idea of looking at architecture with technological advancements, climatic differences and other material related concepts in mind, however, it seems somewhat ridiculous to make up that kind of word--especially since the word doesn't quite translate the same meaning as the explanation Rabinow gives (in a paragraph) which in turn becomes another generalization of ideas that maybe shouldnt be so easily quantified.
While I can come to some overall agreement about the preface to that article, it begins to unravel when Rabinaw refers to Technowhateverism and Middling Moderism. Rabinaw calls MM the lower imitative modernism that creates forms in the aesthetic of High Modernism--yet at face value, what exactly is the difference? I like and respect Corb like the next architecture student, but really, what is the real--physically manifested differences between Corb and any other modernist who has some ideals, makes some work as a result of it, and then either works or doesn't work depending to some degree insight, execution and even a bit of luck. Even Corb has some skeletons in his architectural closet, so really, what makes Ecochard so middling compared to the "high modernism of genius a la Le Corbusier"?
Along a similar thread of thought, the paper by Abu-Lughod tries to separate what is called Islamic architecture from an architecture influenced by the religious and cultural practices of some people who follow the Islamic faith and the cities they have a hand in forming from external forces such as climate and terrain. While the paper is well structured from an academic perspective, personally as an architecture student, I find the solutions cities of that particular area deals with climate and terrain of that region.
For example, I recall seeing a lecture discussing the future urban planning of Dhaka, comparing the past city design from the era when Muslims had control of it compared to the architectures imposed by their British colonizers. To summarize a point of discussion, the climate of Dhaka is one where it is dry to the point of drought for nine months of the year and monsoon wet for three--and for those three months the city would flood completely. The old Muslim city plan allowed for the flooding through the city to bring and deposit rich topsoil into the region while only picking select municipal structures to be built on huge platforms protected from the annual flooding. The British colonizers, set in their methods of city organization, resolved this problem by building a huge dike around the city, protecting a large area of land from the flood waters. However, some problems that came about was that eventually, all the nutrient topsoil ended up being washed away into the ocean because of the dikes protecting the city. The point of my bringing this up is that talking about past city plans and "colonized city plans" in terms of solutions of geographic and climatic challenges is as rich a subject for an architect (at least to me) than the the sexual discrimination of one religious practice and how it manifests in architecture.
I found this week’s readings to be very engaging because they highlighted the role that architecture and urban planning play in attempting to redefine a cityscape. This is most clearly discussed in Zeynep Celik’s, The Sex of Architecture and in Gwendolyn Wright’s, selections from The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism and Paul Rabinow, “France in Morocco: Technocosmopolitanism and Middling Modernism”. All these readings deal with in some form the analysis of the culture clash between the white European colonizer and the colonized nations in Africa. These readings portray quite bluntly the intent of the French with regard to urban planning and development of the cities they conquered. Architecture was used as a tool to “pacify” and dominate the people that occupied the cities they wanted to redesign. In Wright’s article, she discusses at length how France saw city redesign abroad as an opportunity to “civilize” and establish order in those nations, as well as a way to fix many of the urban issues they were being confronted at home. However, these goals were far from successful mainly due to the lack understanding of the Islamic and African cultures and customs.
This deficiency in cross-cultural understanding is more thoroughly exemplified in Celik’s article, where we are given the example of how the French tried to restructure the city plan in Colonial Algiers. Here the French struggled to break local tradition, which referred mainly to the gender specific spaces. Even with a different urban structure and architectural forms imposed by the colonizers, the local people adapted the new building spaces to suit their traditional needs. Cesaire’s excerpt is excellent! It’s thought-provoking examples of how we can define a colonialist and racist mentality were brutally clear and aid in providing additional insight into the mind of colonizers and why many of their redevelopment attempts in their colonies did not have the result they expected.
Cities are living systems, which therefore has a level of unpredictability. Planned cities, regardless of the intent behind its structure, ultimately morph and grow taking a life of its own. For example, Brasilia was very rigidly designed. The city itself is in the middle of a savanna, which required an artificial lake to be created to generate water for the residents. The outline of the city is in the shape of a plane, and all the housing units were 6-9 storey tall apartments grouped neatly across the plane’s “wings”. A decade ago, the plane outline was clearly discernible from above. Now the outlines are blurred, as the landscape and housing structure has completely changed due to population growth and changing climate.
These readings were quite eye-opening for me as, I had never before thought of architecture as a political tool, or as an instrument of manipulation. So these articles definitely made me reassess my views on extent of influence this architecture has.
Rabinow’s France in Morocco: Technocosmopolitanism and Middling Modernism concluded with the statement that “Echochard’s architecture ultimately failed due to his overreliance on science and the power of architecture, as well as his neglect of economic and political considerations”. In this essay Rabinow questions whether or not we can produce viable architecture through modernist norms.
In 1946 Michel Ecochard’s was selected to direct urbanism service in Morocco. His modernist norms were clear through his post World War observation of Morroco’s situation in the 1940’s in which he states “less than five million beings, on a territory the size of france, living completely turned into themselves.” Through this judgment, Ecochard completely discards the infrastructure that was developed less than 30 years earlier by Henri Prost. By the late 1940’s Ecochard once again condemned the state of the Moroccan infrastructure stating that it was unable to keep up with the new economic and demographic systems. To alleviate these problems Ecochards proposed a national plan based on the decentralization of industry. Over time it was evident that the changes made by Ecochard to rebuild Moroccos infrastructure had failed. The architectural organization & rigidity that he conceptualized as the backbone of his urbanism project resulted in the “segregation of lifestyles”. As a result the architecture that was created eventually failed. In this case as in the Prosts’ example the Architect was unable to disassociate his or her own norms in the process of analyzing the specific region resulting in their own ability to foresee the inevitable change of economic, religious, social, and political systems within a given region. Sociologist Maurice Halbwach defined middling modernism as the “human material” on which it worked was a universal subject whose needs, potentialities, and norms could be discovered, analyzed, and formalized by science. Ecochard’s conviction to Middling modernism as a social science with the ability to alleviate these concern resulted in the failure of his project. So the question remains, can architecture survive in an environment that is constantly evolving around it? Does the proactive study of urban planning and social sciences lead to a comprehensive solution to a given problem? In the case of both Prost and Ecochard it seems clear that their conviction to a certain architectural pedagogy ultimately resulted in a form that could not adapt to ever changing needs of its inhabitants and environment.
DRAT! Posted in the wrong place. OOPS
A few thoughts on "the Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism" and it's implications on modernism. Not to belabor the points raised at the beginning of the semester but in terms of Orientalism and it's attitudes, I found in this reading by Gwendolyn Wight further evidences for the argument initiated by Said. The quote And thus, little by little, we conquer the hearts of the natives and win their affection, as is our duty as colonizers" seems to illustrate perfectly the attitudes being enacted globally and historically.
Further it is interesting to discuss the use of urban planning as a control mechanism against nationalistic sentiment in the cultures being colonized (should we say suffering from being colonized?) This situation also shows that the line between Oriental and West as being less resolved and more fuzzy as "colons" lived and worked and returned home bringing ideas and views from the colonies. My mind fast forwards to today trying to identify how urban planning had changed if at all. Are we seeking to dominate and regulate the exchange of culture? to control and quell?
The texts by Abu-Lughod and Celik both convey the idea that the practice of veiling and gender segregation in North Africa played such an immense role in architecture and urban planning in the “Islamic city” that the home remained impenetrable even to French colonialists. The women occupied the private space while the men the public space. What I find particularly interesting is the role that Islamic law played in architecture based on these distinctions between public and private space. For instance, “Islamic law regulated the placement of windows, the heights of adjacent buildings, and the mutual responsibilities of neighbors toward one another so as to guard visual privacy” (Abu Lughod, 167). Celik also notes the asymmetrical arrangement of entrance doors to allow for increased privacy. Abu-Lughod describes the common accessway leading to a few homes in a dead-end quarter as semi-private space and argues that such blurring of spatial divisions is found most often in sex-segregated societies.
Although Islamic property laws encouraged the construction of narrow, convoluted paths in order to subdivide space into relatively permanent quarters, it inadvertently allowed for the woman’s realm to bleed into another semi-private space, the roof. From the roof, no pedestrian meandering through the labyrinth below could see her. The roof became her place of work, socialization, and recreation. She could unveil herself without breaking any laws or codes. Islamic architecture intended for such visual control.
It is no surprise then that when French colonialists came to Algeria and Morocco in the early 1800’s, although they were able to transform the public zones of the city, failed to penetrate the home/private space. For the Islamic family, the home became a refuge from colonialism, an “inviolable” space as Djamila Amarane called it. French architects sought to gain control over this space in building new housing projects (the ‘grands ensembles’). They thought that in merely incorporating their versions or interpretations of the roof and the private courtyards, they would succeed in controlling the smallest and most important social unit in Islamic society: the family. In contrast, not only were these spaces not used as intended- to verify the “authenticity” the architect attempted to recreate- but they also became centers resistance.
While reading Gwendolyn Wright’s “The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism,” I thought Andersen and Hebrard’s idea of a World Center was particularly interesting. This is one example of how the “orchestration,” as Rabinow phrases, between the universal and the particulars of a place became completely unbalanced. The particulars of a culture were completely ignored and instead replaced by general assumptions of how all humans behave and thrive in an environment. Andersen and Hebrard prioritized public health, zoning, and transportation but disregarded cultural, behavioral, social, and other ingrained attributes that influence how users truly live.
The notions of a perfected, universal World Center reminded me of Rome’s Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR) which the Pratt Italy group visited this summer. (I thought of this connection before I read that one of the prominent supports was Mussolini himself..)
Mussolini created this ‘city’ outside of Rome during the 30’s and 40’s intending to celebrate two decades of Fascism. This city is dominated by wide boulevards and severe buildings that combine historic Roman architecture through a modernist vocabulary. For Mussolini, EUR was an attempt to achieve a perfected, rational city. Mussolini’s goals were comparable to the hopes for the World Center – the creation of a new city and “New Man.”
Also similar was that EUR and the World Center both lacked the particulars of a place. While they superficially looked to history for factual information, they failed to capture the social and cultural elements embedded in history. Viewing the EUR through Rabinow’s framework of the ‘technocosmopolitan’ and the ‘middling modernism,’ I think it might fall into his latter category. Mussolini prioritized the use of new technologies, efficiencies, and basic human needs. However, as Rabinow emphasizes, “the material to be operated on was no longer the sedimented historical practices of a particular culture”..but rather one formulated by science (54). While EUR might show some physical resemblance to historical references from ancient Rome, the resulting façades appear lifeless, fake, and quasi-staged. (Is it possible to post pictures? I would like to..)
What’s clearly different is that the World Center was conceived as something that would be replicated throughout the world. Even when Andersen was contemplating where the prototype should be built, the city plan was never altered according to the location, climate, or culture (Wright 65). At first, this struck me as crazy and quite short sighted. But then I was thinking of modern day examples of how this type of planning and architecture continues, as a transplant from one region to the next. I’m not familiar with what agencies, architects, and engineers are doing worldwide, but I do believe that many western planning models are mistakenly and inappropriately being exported to developing countries. I am hopeful yet skeptical that some countries such as India and China will learn from the planning mistakes that we as westerners have made.
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Paul Rabinow's text on technocosmopolitanism and middling modernism in Morocco brought up some interesting points that i believe tie into the discussion from last week regarding regionalism and also power in architecture. The design of the new medina by Albert Laparade is interesting in the fact that here it seems that, at least initially, we have a working example of what I understand to be critical regionalism. His technique of pursuing “systematic inquiries into the Moroccan house, quarter, and city as a total social environment” to “decompose the charm into its architectural and urban components, which would then be recomposed into new forms that integrated these socially rich stylistic elements with modern technology,” we see an approach to merge the history, culture, and aesthetic of the population with new building techniques and technologies. Though this approach is essentially trying to capture the essence of the surroundings, I believe it is effective way to modernize, and potentially revitalize, an urban condition.
The aspect of power in this condition comes in the form of the generic or of anonymity. The aesthetics of the surroundings in a way make the population of inhabitants equals, thereby negating the status of power or politics. Also, the architecture distributed equal light and ventilation to the interiors, reinforcing the ideas of equality within. It’s interesting though that the initial inhabitants of the area were the bourgeois, later being replaced by the middle class. I wonder if that movement was a reaction to the new or if it was generated by the anonymity the medina provided.
I found it disturbing that colonialists chose foreign cities to serve “as laboratories for experimenting with the norms of the modern welfare society prior to their application at home (Rabinow, 53).” This lack of moral conscience is made even worse by the fact that architects like Michel Ecochard and Fernand Pouillon showed a complete disregard to the context they were working in and the people for whom they were designing for. They tried to create a universal design that would work for everyone by ignoring cultural values and interests. For instance, when Pouillon designed the 200 Colonnes, he attempted to incorporate traditional elements of Algerian/Moroccan architecture like the private courtyard and the rooftop terrace. He did, in fact, provide a rooftop terrace and a courtyard for the residents, but only in a formal and superficial sense. He missed the point entirely by turning a traditionally private space (the home courtyards) into one giant communal public courtyard. He also made the rooftop terraces (traditionally used by women for washing clothes) inaccessible to those living on the lower floors because he made the building too tall and the stairs too difficult to navigate with a large basket of laundry. To make matters worse, the only reason why most of these architects even bothered to try to incorporate native architectural elements into their designs was in the hope that it would make the natives less resistant to the colonists coming to exploit their land, resources, and labor. Gwendolyn Wright states, “In neither instance did the ultimate goal revolve around cultural benevolence; the authors were searching for a policy that world make European economic and political power work more effectively, reducing the need for force (75).” I agree with this statement, however, Zeynep Celik’s article led me to believe that it was going a step even further than trying to simply appease the Algerians with new homes. She writes, “To Algerians living under French occupation, home carried a special meaning as the place where they found refuge from colonial interventions perpetually confronted in public life (132). Then she goes on to say, ”Increasingly, the French administration believed that Algeria could be captured only from the smallest social unit, the family. Therefore, penetrating the spaces that had remained inaccessible to the colonizer became a priority (133-134).” These statements suggest to me that the colonizers were making a direct attack on women by choosing to redesign the home (traditionally considered a woman’s space in Islamic countries) in a manner that would force them to abandon their traditional way of living and therefore feel repressed by their new lack of freedom. It is clear, I believe, that any colonizer who claimed that they were “non-political” or operating with the best interests of the colonized people in mind is a complete liar.
This week’s reading on the separation of private and public spaces and the creation of these spaces in Islamic cities was very interesting. It is very logical that with the inherent separation of men’s’ and women’s spaces that a space that is both public and private be created as a transitional zone that allows women who are normally dressed modestly to exit their homes with the privacy of being hidden but without being physically covered up. All of this makes sense and is in accordance with the ways of the society and cultural norms. My one comment to this statement is in offering another understanding for the winding twisting consistency of those semi private streets and some of the more public streets as well. First it is necessary to understand that property and zoning laws function very differently in this culture. Land is given to a family or person representing the whole family. Once that land is given away, it is in full control of the people it is given to. Therefore houses and roads can be directed and built wherever the owners deem appropriate. No thought of urban planning or city design was created—just a place where families could grow and live in close proximity. That is not to say that I disagree with what Janet Abu-Lughod has to say about the creations of these semi private transitional spaces. On the contrary, I think the creation of some type of passage between dwellings of relatives and families is necessary in order to keep the modesty issue satisfied. It is enabled by the fact that houses and entrances to those houses could be placed wherever the owner wants as opposed to within certain urban guidelines—thus creating the winding effect of many Islamic city streets. The creation of these semi-private spaces is dependent on the permissibility of building where one pleases and the necessity of having these spaces in the first place. It is also understandable that Abu-Lughod’s statement of Hindu cities of similar size and terrain have a more straightforward urban design. The need for non-public passageways is not there and so the design for the city does not include it in the planning.
Cesaire’s writing is the most evocative and true portrayal of colonialism I have ever read. The writings of the bourgeois humanist philosophers are exceptionally appalling, and excellent support for Cesaire’s conclusion “that a civilization that colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization-and therefore force-is already a sick civilization, a civilization that is morally diseased”, and that it is the colonizer, not the colonized, who is inevitably transformed into an animal. I think the other important point that Cesaire makes in the writing is that cultural exchange is essential to the survival of a civilization, but there is no room for colonialism and/or racism.
Abu-Lughod’s article on the contemporary relevance of the Islamic city was of particular interest to me. It makes perfect sense to look at the design of cities, not for their physical products, but as a series of processes. Therefore, traditional Arabo-Islamic city design cannot exist without the three main conditions discussed in the paper that are today considered archaic. The same design prescriptions today would not fit the ailments they set out to cure. Arabo-Islamic cities today need to conform to a new set of issues to achieve the same goals of community, privacy and beauty, which were the real staples of the cultural design. I think that Abu-Lughod’s advice needs to be taken more seriously throughout the design profession, and applied to more than just this particular culture.
A question that I have that relates to this writing, and others from the first week regards the topic of Orientalism. I’m not sure if this was discussed, or already defined and I just didn’t catch on, but to be an Orientalist, do you have to have the perspective of an outsider looking in? What makes one Orientalist’s views more valid than another? Can you study the Orient and distinguish yourself as not an Orientalist? I bring this up after reading Abu-Lughod’s article after she admits to having authored a book on Cairo that “fell into the trap set by the Orientalists by accepting many of the earlier authorities about the nature of he Islamic city”. Does she not consider herself an Orientalist? Who would she call the authority on these topics if not the Orientalists? These were just some of my random questions…
As I read through the assigned reading, I began to wonder more about why Europeans, and eventually the United States wanted to colonize in the first place? It seems like a silly question; what someone would reply with, ‘in order to gain more wealth,’ or, ‘access to more resources, and cheap labor.’ But beyond the seemingly obvious answers, I was surprised to see both Rabinow and Wright discussing what was gained aside from the economy of Western colonies. In the case of French occupation of Morocco, it was interesting to see how colonists like Hubert Lyautey saw North Africa as a testing ground for new theory. The new problems posed by having to integrate European governance with the local customs in some ways forced the French to adopt new solutions. If they were to govern effectively, they would have to have work with the existing systems in order to keep the peace. The new schools that were set up in France to meet the new demands gave rise to a new kind of Colonial Urbanism, and more “advances” in orientalist scholarship. Even with all of the discourse between Rabinow, Wright, and to some extent L’Abu-Lughod, I found myself more entranced with Cesaire. Beyond his clear socialist overtones evident in his lambasting of capitalism, he at least addressed my still nagging question: why colonize in the first place? I would agree with Casaire that there is something odious and gravely dysfunctional in the impetus to colonize sovereign nations to ‘civilize barbarism’ or to make useful that which God has given an ignorant people. Indeed, no one colonizes innocently, and I would be willing to investigate the notion that in doing so a colonizing nation is, as Cesaire says, already a sick civilization. So, in a philosophic sense, do nations such as France colonize in order to expose their sickness and in so doing, discover how to inoculate themselves from doing it again in the future? Or, to use Rabinow’s ‘technocosmopolitanism, do the colonizers prescribe a favorable picture of history to beguile them from the realities of their actions. While the most intricate of implications and consequences of colonialism may never be fully proven to the extremities of Cesaire’s accusations. Certainly, the mistakes made by the French and other colonials do show, however, the importance of understanding the complexity and richness of the nations they coexist with so as not make the mistakes and gross generalizations the Wright, Celik, and L’Abu-Lughod pointed out.
While reading I was intrigued with the discussion of Hubert Lyautey's ideas on urban planning. Both "The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism" and "Technocosmopolitanism and Middling Modernism" discuss Lyautey's ideas on the coexistence of different cultures. Lyautey and Joseph-Simon Gallieni moved away from the typical practice of French colonization and started to look at the methods used by the English. Their ideas started to create a coexistence between the indigenous culture and the imposing French system. Keeping the local cultural intact allowed the French to set up a system of control without meeting a resistance that had to be overpowered. The motivation for this coexistence is to gain power and economic growth, but now we are able to see possible strategies in mixed culture development that can account for the needs of both sides.
By incorporating the existing culture into a new development the colony is able to grow into a new urban plan that is more integral to the location and purpose. Forcing modern urbanism into a site without considering the geography or inhabitants will not create an accomplished design. The Rabinow reading describes the failings in Michel Ecochard's redesign of Morocco. The Moroccan people did not use their new dwelling as designed, but made modifications to facilitate their habits (I can't help but think of Chandigarh). This goes to show that the architect is limited in his ability to control or direct the user. When the design begins to account for the differences in cultures a more progressive design is achieved, when the design attempts to overpower or change a culture it is met with resistance or change in use.
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I found the discussion of gender segregation and the Arabo-Islamic city striking. Based on this reading, I agree with Abu-Lughod, who states that “the creation of male and female turf is perhaps the most important element of the structure of the city contributed by Islam . . . line of sight distance, rather than physical distance, was the object of urban design.” Even if we were a class of Archeologists, not Architects, and we were searching for ancient Islamic cities, the evidence of gendered Islamic architecture can be clearly read in what exists and what is lacking in the traces: via the structure and visual absences (“blindspots”). Interestingly, together, these two qualities are the antitheses of typical “western” physical and visual access.
Abu-Lughod states that cities are “living processes rather than formalistic shells for living, they cannot be built by us. We can only encourage them to grow in the desired direction.” This is exactly the opposite approach taken by Eochard, part of the colonizing French class in Morocco in 1946, as explained by Rabinow in France in Morocco. Eochard extended the industrial zone of Casablanca and constructed worker housing and, in effect, mini-cities for the workers. According to Rabinow, Eochard ignored variables of society, geography, culture, and climate. There were multiple cities for thirty to forty thousand people and each track had pedestrian zones and schools.
It seems as though Eochard attempted to “civilize” his Moroccan subjects worked against him in the end. These homes did not suit their resident’s lifestyle, who then changed these spaces to suit their needs. Roof gardens were covered to allow women to retain their “respectability while outdoors”, interior rooms were subdivided, etc. Eochard failed due to a lack of understanding his subject, and his subjects. According to Rabinow, he ignored cultural variables. At the same time, as we learned to a great extent in the Abu Lughod essay, cities are organic. They can only be encouraged, not planned. One can not predetermine its use. This is how and why Eochard failed.
“Lyautey insisted that North Africa was for France ’what the Far West is for America: an excellent testing ground for creating new energy, rejuvenation, and fecundity’.”
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French colonial administration touches on media influence and marketing strategies to promote the acceptance of new ideas in Morocco… in this case urban design.
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Garnier’s zoning methods by function vs Hebrard’s by social class.
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The adjustment of scalar design: Architecture moves away from the objectivity of the building as whole. Context is considered.
The world center – I find it ironic that the scalar shift from architecture to urban design is about context, yet Hebrard plugs the same model into several different geographical locations without altering it according to context. (“…the love of grandeur sometimes develops into megalomania.”) Hebrard is contradictory in his methods to create a unified city. Just because you provide for every social class, you still create hierarchy by geographically grouping social classes. Independently functioning small cities grouped together to create a whole; unity by separation is absurd. Who would govern Hebrard and Anderson’s world capital?
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The idea of politics influencing architectural design shows up again in “The Sex of Architecture.” Pre-colonized Algiers identified spaces with gender: private = female, public = male. When the French administration used their colonial marketing methods on the housing level, additional scalar issues took place.
200 Colonnes – Pouillon’s efforts to incorporate the Algerian life style into French ideas of colonization failed. For example he made “the courtyard… the scale of a public square, thereby taking it away from the residents of the building. His attempt to emulate or borrow concepts of urban design and architecture from a civilization/culture he did not fully comprehend results in user rebellion causing the project to fail at its original intentions. It was also interesting to see the Algerians’ use of the architecture as a political, physiological, and physical resistance to colonization; using the home as a protective ‘shell’ to resist colonization efforts. In contrast to Hebrard, Simounet had a more authentic understanding of Algerian culture and vernacular which led to a more functional Djenan el-Hasan. This brings me back to previous class discussion on authenticity, essence, and their derivatives.
(Direct influence v passive reflection; urban design and political process.)
How can we participate in and contribute to the essence of place?
A clear answer/response/solution does not exist, but that is why I am here. From the readings we become more aware of histories successes and failures. Learning and improving on solutions or ideas as ‘testing grounds’ for experimentation.
The readings for this week seem to have “zoomed” out a bit with regard to architecture, in that they concentrate on the urban scale. We have previously discussed the influence that power and politics have had over design and it is safe to say that the same lesson applies here. The insatiable urge of a metropolis to continue growth and prosperity force it to expand it boundaries not only to claim new property but to ensure the development of the core. This inevitable sprawl unfortunately is hardly considerate to the cultures and lifestyles of the colonies it overcomes.
Perhaps survival of the fittest is an unwritten code in civilization; certainly it is in the jungle. But to me, and I think Cesaire, it only makes sense to at least consider the native’s reaction of the territory up for conquering, even if your army immensely dwarfs the colony in question. However, it is difficult to grasp indigenous traditions and not mistake them for poor planning. In the Islamic city the public and private realm is extremely influential to the layout of the city. Lines of sight and circulation routes prevent a grid system. The reserved gendered spaces and separation of women almost seem like wasted space and have to be reconfigured when trying to fit them into the modern model. Are these traditions just a different configuration of urbanization or are the inhibiting the colony’s growth.
So, if you had to conquer a city and you only had one chance to get it right or wrong the question then becomes; are you going to be respectful to their current situation which may be dilapidated at its current state hence the cheap/easy real estate, or will you go with what you know has worked for you in the past? Or will you claim indifference and pull the modern card or an innovative approach. In some cases it is helpful to retain certain infrastructural norms and be respectful, but at other times… change is good, but these decisions are best left to the suits in politics
Reading the Paul Rabinow essay on Morocco and the Algiers started my interest in learning a little bit more about Garnier’s “Cité Industrielle” which I think it is a realistic approach to contemporary sub-urban city planning imposing a “Haussmannistic kind of Plan” (referring to Baron Haussmann’s Plan of Paris). Garnier’s plan tries to desintrail the functionability of the land trying to maximize its use on manufacturing and advantage of land. Charles-Edouard Jeanneret paid homage to “Cité Industrielle” forty years later on “Maniére de Penser l’Urbanisme”: “Around 1900, Tony Garnier, in his Cité Industrielle, materialized as a series of majestic drawings, proposes for the first time a town that has become the domain of the public and provides community facilities for all the inhabitants. He integrates, once again, dignity and purity, after a long eclipse, in the areas of habilitation, work, and civic contact.” LeCorbusier wrote on the juxtaposition of cities by utilizing Garnier’s division of groups and sub-groups on urban planning, with clear ideals and crisp functionalism, smoothly based on the ideas of utopian socialism formulated by Charles Fournier and Pierre Joseph Proudhon.
Reading the text of Paul Rabinow brought up a new side about colonialization. Often colonialisation has a bad connotation in the way one state occupy another and suppress the inhabitents. Also the treatment of the occupied nation in terms of human rights and freedom in general comes to my mind.
Although the text does not perticular say something about those facts it says something about the ideas and the intentions of the occupieng force.
With the leadership of France in Marocco and Lyautey in charge for the dependency a comprehensive experiement in urban planning was made.I find it intresting how Henri Prost tried to think of new urban conditions how to combine social life and urbanity to a new set up or a new way of life. Trying something new without negotiating the traditional rules and the lifestyle of the people in marroco. In a way he wanted to reconstitute the social and the urban and architectural conditions in Marocco.
Rabinow describes later in his text the development
of Marocco under the leadership of Echochard.
In this Post War period he wanted to introduce a new system inspired by Le Corbusiers statemant "renovate the cities first you must reorganize the countryside". The balance between the demographic stability and the economic development should be reached by the groth of more middle-sized-cities.
Intresting isthe fact that he wants to develop a kind huge industrial areas with living space for the workers nearby.
An intresting fact about the readng of Janet L Abu-Lughod was the description of spacial division in housing. The realtionship between public,private semi-private/public is architctually intresting.
If one think of the program of a residential in Germany and in Marocco, the rooms are doubled in the "islamic design".
The notion how a section trough such a building look like is spacial and in terms of contnuity absorbing.
“Cities are the products of many forces, and the forms that evolve in response to these forces are unique to the combination of those forces.” (162)
Abu-Lughod goes on to describe these forces, and specifically separate the forces that are unique to traditional Islamic cities from forces that can be applied to other regions. The analysis is broken down into three parts, each of which after discussing, she explains why in the context of today it would be very difficult to recreate these conditions.
1- “distinctions made on the basis of ascribed status” would today be considered racist
2- The inequality of the sexes is something that most cultures are moving away from- towards equality
3- Centralized government systems are becoming the common method of organizing a given territory
Even if there were a place today where one could find the conditions of traditional Islamic cities, which the author is arguing as to be very unlikely, we return to a critique that has the familiar tone as that of “Regionalism”. The author is critiquing the ‘earlier Orientalists’ as she refers to them as, in their notion that the Islamic City is something that can be defined in such general terms outlined in the work, and the desire to return to or recreate these places upon study of the past patterns and planning.
“But since cities are living processes rather than formalistic shells for living, they cannot be built by us. We can only encourage them to grow in the desired direction.” (173)
I like this quote in the conclusion of The Islamic City reading because it seems to tie into an earlier discussion we had in class regarding the power of the architect, and to what extent the architect can control or predict the outcome of society/human response or action in a given context. I find it interesting that Oscar Newman’s book Defensible Space emerges from within the text. It is brought up when discussing the “Neighbourhood as a Key Element in Society and the State”, specifically the Arabo-Islamic city was designed to maximize what Newman has termed defensible space.” I can’t see this as a prescedent for designing secure public spaces. What has emerged as “defensible space” from the Islamic city is really an emergence of a complex set of circumstances depending on specific space/time relationships, which can not be analyzed as a model for the architect to then recreate in another context.
On “Gendered Spaces in Colonial Algiers” by Zeynep Celik
I’ll say this at the risk of sounding like an overly imaginative, projecting Orientalist: I’m pretty sure there’s a romantic screenplay hidden in the dichotomous world of the Casbah. You know, a love story about a righteous, young architect with a genuine interest in Algerian domestic and urban architecture – who can’t quite see in through the doors or windows of a home to get a first hand account of the internal spaces. And, to add insult to injury he unconsciously internalizes the surveilling eyes of the women inside that he resorts to making imaginary, interpolated sketches that are more revealing as a grotesque “pastiche” of his own psycho-sexual desires, than they are the beginnings of his regionally critical architecture. Ok, here’s the problem – there’s no chance of a romantic encounter with an Algerian female architect! All on account of gender separation.
I’m kidding, or caricaturing, of course.
What I want to bring attention to, however, is 1) the fascinating power that a simple difference in culture can have in guiding the creation of architecture – and 2) how that architecture subsequently affects power. Also, Yes, I’m obsessed with the last class discussion of power – just in different terms:
1) I have to admit that I have always felt terribly uneasy about societies that separate men and women so categorically, as is depicted in Celik’s and Abu-Lughod’s writing this week. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help noticing how this intricate difference in spatial appropriation for men and women is addressed. I never knew that there were sequestered spaces (the interior of the house) AND public, but exclusively female spaces (rooftop terraces). Is it possible that gender separation (and other discontinuities) actually induce rich architecture? Or, here’s an itchier question: I definitely feel that keeping women inside and allowing men exclusive domain over public/civic life is pretty unfair – and un- modern (in the contemporary sense, not the colonial sense)– but this is not up to me, since it’s someone else’s culture – and therefore due it’s equal respect. Am I allowed to admire those architectural structures which are born from “separate, therefore unequal” gender system? I suppose it doesn’t matter in the end.
2) When talking about how architecture can affect power, I was fascinated by the idea that Algerian homes an their innate program of privacy provided a subversive solace to an occupied people. In this respect homes were considered “’inviolable space’, where Algerians recovered their identity”, a form of quiet resistance. However, the sanctity of female spaces was not considered immutable when actual armed conflict arose, because private houses were used as secret passageways for resistance fighters.
I agree with what Kyle mentions here, a few blogs up, that Albert Laprade’s ideas for the new medina for the expanding Moroccan population can be seen as critical regionalism, or at least his intentions and approach for the project though the outcome may not have been successful at that. His methods for the initial design approach to me would fall under the term “critical regionalism.” His approach seems, from what I read in Rabinow’s text, to have been filled with romanticism, enthusiasm and great respect for the Moroccan social environment as he “enthusiastically filled his notebooks with numerous drawings of vernacular architectural motifs” seeking the “values of ambiance.”
The outcome of Prost’s team of the new medina was seen as a true Moroccan neighborhood, was it a successful project? It was popular enough in the beginning to attract the bourgeois, who later moved to the next attraction, the villas in Casablanca, and where replaced by state employees and people of the middle class. That, to me, sounds like a successful project. I am sure that the new medina was not intended for only the bourgeois, but rather the society with all its classes as a whole.
With all the best intentions of creating an urban situation which through its properties could prevent racism and (in this case) bring harmony between the Colonizers and the Colonized, the Lyautey-Prost development project was largely seen as a failure, which is in my opinion due to the unrealistic belief in the power of architecture. However, I feel that the ideas and the architecture should set themselves this unrealistic goal because it is a constant experiment in creating a better community.
Although the opportunity to discuss the role of colonization appears to be the focus of the readings I like to take a different approach to my analysis and write about the significance and role of our current education.
My undergraduate education was pretty straight forward but my graduate education on the other hand is more interested in experimenting and searching the unknown in the field of architecture. In Wright’s second chapter “Colonial opportunities” architects and urban sociologist/planners such as Hebrard, Prost and Lyautey were tackleling similar unknowns. Specifically the impact and relationship that emerges from the situation of one country conquering another and then opting to inhabit and control it while maintaining pre-existing cultural and social environments. And more importantly how could these “solutions” be brought home and incorporated with their own nation.
What I found interesting was not the problem but HOW the questions were tackled. I found the idea of using the colonies as real-world test labs fascinating. I question how far architecture and urban design would have developed had we not had the opportunity to use the colonies. As the chapter explains these experiments were not welcomed back home as in the case of Garnier whose project was refused by the Paris Ecole sought to control and maintain the existing role of architecture. But the colonies did not posses this rigid mentality and if they did were in no position to refute the experiments taking place.
The ideas and concepts these men dreamed up have been prevailed as the ultimate holy grail of architecture and planning, the creation of the ultimate city, our utopia, our garden of Eden. How’s that for the ultimate architectural god complex. It’s been tried all over the world from Brazilia, Rockerfeller Center in Albany to the EUR in Rome. Yet I just realized that after roughly 100 years we have not come any closer to creating the ultimate city.
The question then becomes are we trying to achieve the wrong solution for the problem? Maybe different cultures aren’t meant to coexist. In the classic case of the garden of Eden it is assumed everyone lives in piece, including the animals. But we know that’s impossible. There are always predators and prey. Much like maybe there are always conquering nations and conquered nations. So maybe our role should focus more developing the separation of cultures versus trying to “create” a unified world of cultural diversity.
In my eyes, the politics involved in architecture continually become more complex and intricate with every objective added to the pot. Celik explains the gender-based and separate turfs to prevent physical contact between men and women, in Gendered Spaces in Colonial Algiers. As architects, or architect students, we are taught to design some sort of dwelling / shelter unit. Check list: base support check, insulated walls check, leak free ceilings check, sufficient amount of diffused light check, reduced carbon footage check, zoning regulations abide check, exterior to interior access check, performing dance space (just a little criteria on my part) check, client negotiation check, engineer approved check, separate roof terrace for females and urban surroundings for males check, controlled power to colony leaders check. Wait a second. That wasn’t listed under the job description!
Alright, so a bit dramatic, but I can’t help but feel saddened by the implied thought that in order to succeed in colonization for the Algerian culture, means that it has now become an obligation to the architect to surrender to such gender separation, within our own, need I say, Western culture. First, I want to state that I respect the ideals or dedication of and to other cultures and I apologize for my bluntness, or more so lack of knowledge to the culture itself, but I feel strongly about my rather feminist point of view, or more so just simple respect to every individual.
Yes, this information is taken from the colonial period, but never have I ever or will I ever take into consideration the notion of such gender separation, beyond separate bath and changing rooms, when it comes to design aesthetic…
…Random babble…Actually, come to think about it, this sort of separation exists right here in Brooklyn. For anyone who doesn’t know, I teach aerobics on the side and last year I taught at ‘Kosher’ gym in downtown Brooklyn. Needless to say, this gym was exclusively Jewish and kosher (separate) in these regards. Once again, I admit to being somewhat naïve to the Jewish traditions and culture and was therefore surprised that besides the separation of food, they also separate the times that different sexes are allowed in the gym. First, there are separate entrances on either side of the building for females, males, and then the middle entrance for visitors. The females were allowed to come to the gym from something like 9-12, the males from 12:30-4:30, the females from 5-8, and the males from 8:30-11:30 (the half hour in-between allowed for machine cleaning). Given the aged look of the building, I can only assume that it was not originally designed to house the gym or imagine the separation that would be implemented. Since I do respect this community, I question, who am I to say that I disapprove of this separation and refuse to design for them? Once again, I talk my way into circles and somehow contradict everything I said previously. I suppose I admit that I need to discuss and think about this theme a bit more. I therefore conclude that I think the degree of separation is important to take into consideration and perhaps depends on if and how it affects surrounding cultures.
Colonialism is a word that hits me and wakes my senses, could sound repetitive but been from the Dominican Republic (the first island colonized for Spain in America), I have grow up with the taste of ancestors talking about an abuse, a exploitation and the complete robbery of their culture and identity.
Reading the lecture and trying to understand the French’s point of view of the term “Colonia” or
“Colonialism” looking at it from a more open and progressive point of view and in other situations like the architectural and educational aspects that a conquest causes. “Social imperialism would not only pacify the colonies and make them more productive; it would also provide a way to revitalize metropolitan France, regenerating politics and culture with new leaders, fresh ideas, and proven methods” (Xerox pag. 3), I understand this like a good approach for a civilized country, but Is it true?, we can see how in the city of Casablanca the French impact (social-economical-cultural) changes a city, a country, a identity for ever, since another culture takes over your land, your goods, your women, your kids, Is it possible to convert this new citizens in the new representation of a country (French).
Stills in my mind the fact that, Is it Colonialism what we understand now for war? I think the term has changed in the same order in how things are treated today for new “colonizers”. We see a country taking over another one with the excuse of helping it for better and with the “hope” that this new country can provide a economical benefit in exchange of what this country thinks is advance, but when you offer education, social benefits and a completely new city (most of the time because the actual city has been destroyed from war or battles between countries) is then when our service as architects is required and in the case of Joseph Marrast when design Casablanca his idea of incorporate vernacular architecture into the new governmental buildings in order of gain the affection and respect of the locals, showing them that the new conquistador was in there for “good” and at the end he considers that that was there roll as colonizers.
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