METHODS OF ANALYSIS AND RESTORATION OF URBAN FABRIC AND BUILDING

TYPES IN THE INTERCULTURAL CONTEXTS OF THE EASTERNMEDITERRANEAN HISTORIC CENTRES

Politecnico di Bari
Abstract

The research programme aims at furnishing criteria for the analysis, rehabilitation or preservation of the
characteristics in urban fabric of marked multicultural origin in the Eastern Mediterranean, developing
an investigation on public space and housing and fabric.
It shall point out the problems of interpretation and correct restoration and rehabilitation they show, in
order to build up knowledge of the character of urban structures and typology and to contribute to urban
rehabilitation and design criteria, proving the sustainability from the point of view of the preservation
of existing historical character of projects aiming at the adaptation of the existing urban and building
structures to new functional and social needs.
It shall develop and systematize the protocols for the vulnerability assessment and risk mitigation
specialized for the local context that are the object of the investigation.
The criteria of correct rehabilitation will be exemplified through experimental architectural projects.
The research applies to multiethnic and multicultural urban situations within an area running from the
Aegean islands to South-eastern Anatolia, reaching into North Syria, in which prevailed the mixture of
ethnical and religious communities -- Greek, Genoese, Turkish, Moslem Arab, Christian Syriac,
Caldean, Armenian -- from the late Roman-Byzantine period, up to historicist revivals.
The basic material will be obtained, partly through field surveys, and partly, using secondary sources
derived from extant monographic bibliography, and material derived from previous research work.
Theoretical elaboration will list and describe the elements and factors which determine the character
and values of the urban spaces, types and fabric; will analyse the modality of multicultural expression
and define the interaction between collective space and housing fabric, through the definition of a grid
of typological, linguistic and constructive elements, and it will point out structural elements historically
marking the local constructive culture in an aseismic sense.

Project reference, that is the exposition of potential intervention, will be developed through "fast
projects", an atlas of rehabilitation, and the elaboration of guidelines in order to reduce the seismic risk.
Project ideas will exemplify criteria of rehabilitation and valorisation through the definition of a general
sustainable method of intervention in urban fabric, that shall pay attention to the religious and cultural
behaviours of the communities. They will also exemplify the updating traditional constructive systems.
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Principal Investigator

Attilio PETRUCCIOLI Politecnico di BARI

Research Objectives

Developing an investigation on public space and an investigation on the construction tecniques, housing
and fabric, the research programme aims at furnishing well-articulated criteria for the analysis,
rehabilitation or preservation of the characteristics in urban fabric of marked multicultural origin in the
Eastern Mediterranean, built or transformed from the 18th-cent up to the beginning of the 20th-cent,
and which constitutes an important part of the residential and commercial centres of the maritime and
administrative cities of the Levant.
More specifically it should:
- point out the problems of interpretation and correct restoration and rehabilitation resulting from the
coexistence of Arab, Neo-Hellene, Turkish Ottoman, Armenian, pre-17th-cent Genoese, modern Italian
and Western, urban, architectural and stylistic models within the same fabric;
- build up knowledge of the character of urban structures (morphology) and typology form (recurrent
building forms) as historical sediments so as to define the above-mentioned interactions and the linkage
of collective buildings to residential fabric;
- point out the interaction of Western and local architecture with the aim to grasp the relationship of
historical structure to modern buildings (in other words, of interventions which de-structure' ancient
oriental' structures and new Western modern' interventions); hence, investigate the theoretical
question of mutual East-West influences in the architecture and types of the Mediterranean East;
- contribute to urban rehabilitation and design criteria pointing out the causes of preservation or loss of
elements and factors which characterise the urban fabric of eastern Mediterranean towns;
- prove the sustainability from the point of view of the preservation of existing historical character, of
projects aiming at the adaptation of the existing urban and building structures to new functional and
social needs;
- exemplify through experimental architectural projects new methods of preservation of the historical
and environmental character of the fabric through new edification where restoration or preservation is
not possible or sufficient;
-define model forms for the first and second level vulnerability assessment and of the related
application protocol, through the know-how of the typical technological and constructive features of the
local building; identification and classification of the recurrent structural types on the territory;
definition of an abacus of masonry types and architectural/structural types.
-define provisional works types; classes of rehabilitation and retrofit techniques for the specific
structural and architectural types, pointing out criteria for a correct choice of the interventions. <<<
First Results

Expected results, expressed through written and/or published report, dossiers and exemplary project
files, will afford:
- the definition of the characteristics of urban structure (morphology) and typology (current building
forms) aiming at the definition of interaction between collective space and housing fabric;
- description of the interaction between Western architecture and local architecture, that is, between
historical structure and modern building activities, investigating, furthermore, European and Italian
influences;
- listing of the problems of interpretation and of correct restoration and rehabilitation in consequence of
the coexistence within the same urban fabric of different urban, architectonic and style models;
- the investigation of the interrelations and interferences of different typological concepts;
- the research of urban rehabilitation and design criteria with reference to the causes of the preservation
or loss of elements and factors which characterize types, fabric and urban space;
-establishing a comparative inventory of the fabrics, the types and the tectonic characters aiming at
defining an atlas of rehabilitation towards the updating of the house and the related fabric;

- considerations on the sustainability of projects for the adaptation of building and urban structures to
functional and social needs, with reference to the preservation of their existing characteristics.
- definition of criteria for the reduction of the seismic risk and the coherent tecniques of intervention.
The section referring to rehabilitation projects will furnish various files containing:
- map file of the urban history of the case;
- bibliographical file for the urban history of the case studies;
- new and historical photographs;
- survey drawings of the individual types and of important details (1:500, 1: 100 e 1:20);
- axonometry and/or perspective views of significant tracts of public space or fragment of space;
- project ideas which will exemplify criteria for rehabilitation e valorization.
- definition of a general sustainable method and criteria of intervention in the urban fabrics, that pays
attention to the religious and cultural behaviours of the communities;
- update of the traditional constructive systems of the residence through progressive technologies and
rationalization of the building sites.
- the protocols of evaluation, reduction and prevention of the seismic risk in the case-study of Tartous.
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Timescale

12 months
National and international background

The state of the art.

The research project has its starting point in previous research on multicultural urban fabric of Eastern
Mediterranean towns in which coexist types of different epoch, function and cultural origin or period,
and which consequently have peculiar rehabilitation problems. Within that branch of research, it
concentrates on the diverse aspects of house types and public space, within an area running from the
Aegean islands to South-eastern Anatolia, reaching into North Syria, in which prevailed the mixture of
ethnical and religious communities: Greek, Genoese, Turkish, Moslem Arab, Christian Syriac, Caldean,
Armenian, from the late Roman-Byzantine period, up to historicist revivals, and 19th-to-20th century
Eclecticism.
During the last three decades increasing attention has been paid, on one hand, to the coexistence of
heterogeneous and even conflicting, urban and architectural models, urban and typological concepts,
within the same towns and within the same fabrics and, somehow less frequently, within preservation
policies, and on the other hand, to those town parts which had been transformed during the second half
of the 19th-cent and the first decades of the 20th century.
The international seminars and collective studies reported in point 2.2a.1, especially A Supra-National
Heritage 1999 / Corpus d'Archologie 1996 / Studi Storici, Disegno Urbano 2000, as well as the
research work coordinated by the proponents of this project, have brought evidence of these processes.
In the last two decades, the change in the perspective of historical studies has also determined a change
in the study of architectural typology and urban morphology in the non-European Mediterranean
regions
Very interesting, in as much as it evidenced common trends in coastal towns of the North-Eastern
Mediterranean, was the International Seminar "Le patrimoine architectural au Levant 2001".
The exclusive search for Mediterranean' or Oriental' or Islamic' specificity (in opposition to European
culture and history) has given way to a more subtle cognition of interrelations, stimulated by
developments in European typo- morphology studies, especially in France and Italy. As well, the

interest shown by Western urban geography and town-planning for suburbs and banlieue', has
stimulated the extension of the case studies beyond pre-18th-century and pre-industrial structures and
forms so as to cover the entire range of the modern city's evolution: moving from the isolation of
structures in supposedly exclusive, homogeneous and pure' national and ethnic contexts, to the
inclusive analysis of intercultural coexistence and the awareness that complexity is no longer an
exclusive privilege of the European city but that it is perceivable in the cities of the Levant, too.
On the other hand, historical analysis, widening its field of investigation, has unveiled, by analogy,
contaminations and interferences -- which imply complexity -- in ancient urban fabric (this is the case
of the Kampos in Chios, of the historical continuity in the typological and linguistic elements of the
dead cities' of Roman Syria which resurge as new or revisited elements in 18th and 19th-cent
syncretism).
Almost all the towns of the region contain complex and variegated urban fabric with many internal
contradictions and conflicts.
It is now being discovered that those are no mere frontier cases. They are part of a very wide urban
reality, resulting from a three-century-long process of transformation, with no closure in a purely
"autochthonous" state of things, and showing different peaks in different situations.
It has been up to the typo-morphology studies to render a more dynamic interpretation of these areas
and of the types they are composed of and consequently, to discover their potentiality of urban reform.
The methodological approach assumed by the project owes much to the general typologicalmorphological approach (see in 2.2a.1, for example, the conferences: Typological Process and
Design..1995 / 5th International Colloquium "Architectural Knowledge 1998 / 6th ISUF ..1999).
Another argument is the strong cultural interdependence of Europe and the Levant and among the subregions of the Levant, whose observation has opened new visuals to urban design because of the
complexity of factors and dynamism it reveals. In some significant cases, the Italian artistic and
technical mediation, up to the 20th century, has been very interesting and points to historical
undercurrents that throw light on architectural and urban problems in those towns. For the architectural
aspects of this mediation see: Girardelli P., " Ottoman Influences in the Works of Some Italian
Architects / Petruccioli A. ed., "European Houses / Petruccioli A. ed., "Amate Sponde" / various
essays (2.2a.5) in "Multicultural urban fabric and types".
International seminars and collective studies on the late Ottoman Empire, which practically
incorporated the whole area, have thrown much light on the intercultural and multicultural phenomena
that have transformed all main towns in the 19th century. See: International "Interactions in Art"
Symposium, Hacettepe University, Ankara 25-27 November 1998 / ICTA-XI, 1999 11th International
Congress of Turkish Art in Utrecht University, August 1999 / International Congress A Supra-National
Heritage'1999 / "Studi Storici, Disegno Urbano 2000 / "Multi-Cultural Space and Fabric. 2002,
and the ensuing publication "Multicultural urban fabric and types in the South and Eastern
Mediterranean".
The discovery of such overlapping cultural layers strongly reflects on the state of the art of
rehabilitation of Eastern Mediterranean towns and potentially on preservation policies.
The three research groups participating in the project have chosen case studies within the area which
allow to use the material of previous research work by the same groups or by other researchers, as a

solid starting point.

This group's previous research work has developed typological and map investigations of the proposed
case studies, and has examined multicultural influences and proposed preservation and rehabilitation
criteria. It is documented in: (ref. To Bibliography 2.2a) Cerasi, 2000, "The loving imitation" /
Cerasi, 2001 "The Modality of Transmission of " / Cerasi, 2001 "The Problem of Specificity and
Subordination." / Cerasi, 2000 "Un Barocco di Citt" / Cerasi, 1999 "The Urban Perspective " /
Cerasi, 1998 "The Formation of Ottoman House" / Cerasi, "The Deeper Structures of Ottoman
Housing" / Cerasi, 1997 "Three Questions put to the Archaeologist". / Cerasi, 1997 "Citt e
Architettura nel Settecento" / Cerasi, M., 1995 "Da Costantinopoli a Istanbul". / Petruccioli, 1998
"European Houses" / Petruccioli, 2000 "Rethinking the XIX Century Town" / Petruccioli , 1998
"Typological Process and Design" / Petruccioli (1994-1998) research on " House and fabric in the
Medeiterranean Islamic countries" at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, published in "After
Amnesia. Learning from the Islamic Mediterranean Fabric", (see, for the results: Fifth International
Conference " Architectural Knowledge and Cultural Diversity", Ascona, 1998 and resumed in
"Historical Processes of the Building Landscapes", in Comportments, ed. W. O'Reilly, Lausanne, 1999,
pp. 39-50 / Petruccioli, A. "La casa a corte: un'introduzione allo studio dei processi tipologici nel
Mediterraneo" in Eslami N.A. (ed.), Architetture e citt del Mediterraneo tra Oriente e Occidente,
Genova 2002, pp. 225-244 / Petruccioli, A. "New Methods of Reading the Urban Fabric of the
Islamicized Mediterranean", in Built Environment, ed. by Noha Nasser, Oxford, vol. 28, n. 3, 2002,
pp.202-216.
This material traces a methodological path as well as furnishing a consistent amount of photographs,
surveys, reconstructions and hand-drawn and electronic graphic presentations, usable in the first phases
of the research work. The research project dwells more specifically on the methodological and
analytical aspect of the general theme. It deals with the question of overlapping languages and
structures within the same urban contexts and the conflicts and heterogeneity (as well as the cultural
and aesthetic interest) that such overlapping generates. <<<