How Syria's architecture laid the foundation for brutal war
I love when someone comes up with what to me are ideas I have never thought of or even considered. In this case I have known the effect of horrible (monsterous) architecture in communities and rejected it more than a half century ago in favor of log cabins, homemade adobe structures, and, here in the Caribbean, old style local wood shack design. In ten minutes, the Syrian architect has shone a new light on some of the origins of the war in Syria, and the present sickness in many of the world's cities.
When I was in school in the USA I lived in urban slums or on their edge (except in Washington State where I lived in a small converted chicken coup in the woods off campus). I had some subliminal realization that the urban architecture was toxic to communities and was somehow intimately intertwined with the entire social/economic disaster taking place in the USA. I decided that I would never again live in such urban environments, that shack living was preferable.
The past couple years, watching the destruction of the lives of so many people in the Middle East and around the world, I sometimes commented to myself that, "As long as the people were evacuated and safe, those blocks of ugliness would be better off being demolished and rebuilt by hand after giving the people land titles and supplies and a seat in the block and neighborhood cooperatives."
To my family jokingly, "The architects ought to be. . . (punishment depending on mood, best one is "hired with sweat shop wages to build the prisons for themselves").
With that background, I wish to introduce Marwa al Sabouni's TED talk entitled, "How Syria's architecture laid the foundation for brutal war." I highly recommend the ten minutes listening to this wonderful woman's take on Syrian architecture and how it has formed one of the basis for the sectarian violence in Syria. Be sure to check out the transcript to which I add a few quotes.
https://www.ted.com/talks/marwa_al_sabouni_how_syria_s_architecture_laid...?
But over the last century, gradually this delicate balance of these places has been interfered with; first, by the urban planners of the colonial period, when the French went enthusiastically about, transforming what they saw as the un-modern Syrian cities. They blew up city streets and relocated monuments. They called them improvements, and they were the beginning of a long, slow unraveling. The traditional urbanism and architecture of our cities assured identity and belonging not by separation, but by intertwining. But over time, the ancient became worthless, and the new, coveted. The harmony of the built environment and social environment got trampled over by elements of modernity — brutal, unfinished concrete blocks, neglect, aesthetic devastation, divisive urbanism that zoned communities by class, creed or affluence.
While many reasons had led to the Syrian war, we shouldn't underestimate the way in which, by contributing to the loss of identity and self-respect, urban zoning and misguided, inhumane architecture have nurtured sectarian divisions and hatred. Over time, the united city has morphed into a city center with ghettos along its circumference. And in turn, the coherent communities became distinct social groups, alienated from each other and alienated from the place. From my point of view, losing the sense of belonging to a place and a sense of sharing it with someone else has made it a lot easier to destroy.
There are quite a few books criticizing housing, both public and corporate, in the USA and the whole issue needs discussion using new paradigms. My own paradigm, very very briefly, is for new titles created for each block in the cities to a democratic block cooperative, or an individual family, to rebuild or rehabilitate with their own efforts and with funding for materials from subsidizing construction material cooperatives.
Comments
I am with you from the hum of living less-dense
and find cities stressful with bad building design. Non-welcoming. The not-new Pei (?) glass pyramid in front of the Louvre is a friendly break. Paris is friendly, centre-ville. Les Bain-lieus not so much. New Orleans the same. Three stories is about comfortable for imposing, 5 is max. Eye level is human-important.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
A wonderful book that analyses architecture
from a broad, historical and archetypal point of view, is A Pattern Language. First published in in 1977, it is still very relevant to much of the social malaise that infects modern cities all over the world.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/architecture/2009/12/do_you_see_a_pat...
native
Thank you
I enjoyed learning from Marwa's video. I believe we have the same issues here in the US in many of our city-scapes - that same alienation and segregation by class, race etc. When the living spaces one occupies are ugly and uninviting, it has an effect on the psychological and physical health of the communities that live in them.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
Excellent video
The main points she makes in her video echo much of my own beliefs based upon what I learned in my years as a land use planner. While zoning can be useful to keep harmful uses such as heavy industrial uses away from the places where people live and work, we have created very segregated societies by segregating ourselves away from one another based upon zoning and upon how property is appraised and assessed for taxation purposes. This leads to a creation of rich and poor residential areas which are completely separated away from where people work and shop.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
My husband was an architect through New Brutalism
The only nice thing we got was square windows, no mullions. EZ clean. But imposing faces. So, however, is Versailles. Old train stations can be nice, until imposed in a city. Different face need. Making schools not look like prisons, that is what he specialized in. Successful? I don't know.
Center Island (?) high school was one of his carry-outs. Middle LI, NY. Got to deal with the mafia there (gosh memories today) I met someone Big. My husband told me then if he died...
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
landed personal space is a biological necessity for humans
Alex, thank you for this Essay. I've said for years that ultra-urban, high-density living does little else for humans but make them sicker, more unhappy, and more violent.
Landed personal space is a biological necessity for humans. It's part and parcel of us. Stacking humans like cordwood in apartment buildings is sheer stupidity. Like it or not, humans need to have a piece of actual ground which belongs to them and theirs alone. Violating this rule always leads to massive increases in crime, disease, and war.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
@thanatokephaloides I agree, but under the
I agree, but under the current conditions, doing that is likely to result in destroying what's left of our farms and definitely our wild spaces.
The reason people are often in support of high-density is because they're desperately trying to preserve some wild spaces and some rural spaces, in the face of too many people alive on the planet. But you're right that crowding people together like that is not good. Nor is it good to build straight up in order to save land, which is what they're doing here in Gainesville. Going to end up changing the town very much for the worse.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
If there is one technology
that has devastated architecture the most, and devastated nearly all human interactivity along with it, it would have to be the technology of the automobile. Architectural theory and practice now lives almost exclusively within the conceptual confines of the parking lot. Availability of, and access to transportation has come to define the meaning, purpose, and function of most contemporary architecture.
A new "building" (such as one of Frank Gehry's whimsical creations) may be a work of high architectural and engineering accomplishment, yet it need have no relation to, or interaction with, whatever exists around it. It stands isolate and self contained -- serving an example or abstract ideal, rather as a participant within the community or region within which it is built.
This "isolate" character of nearly all contemporary architecture is facilitated by, or even demanded of architects, by the very nature of the transportation system that provides access to whatever it is that is being built. All new buldings must be surrounded by sufficient parking lots, plus ingress and egress routes large enough to accommodate the numerous cars of whomever might use the primary structure.
Thus we have new buildings of whatever sort, separated from one another by vast, inhuman, or even anti-human spaces, dominated by vehicles, only just barely accessible on foot, and in fact actively hostile to anyone who is not driving a car. But even car-owners are subject to the daunting and often humiliating environments that surround and isolate one building from another. Probably most foot-travel done by urban and suburban Americans, is done by way of threading one's way between cars in parking lots. These spaces are hardly physical environments that are conducive to relaxed or civilized social interactions. Instead of conversing with one another on our way from here to there, we have been reduced to interacting with one another's cars, in places that are designed solely to accommodate the cars, rather than the people who drive them.
native
@native Excellent comment. That's
Excellent comment. That's something, unlike the pressures of growing population, that we *can* fix. Or well, we could, if we weren't a bunch of "useless eaters" but instead were powerful oligarchs who got a say.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@native This comment and the
This comment and the earlier one by you are both excellent, native.
Post World War II was when suburbia took off. The automobile created the suburbs and the monoculture of architecture associated with it. I also contend that the popularity of the ranch style home is another contributing factor. Older neighborhoods consisted of narrow lots and homes with front porches. These two factors allowed for neighbors to interact with one another and keep eyes and ears on the streets. People actually knew their neighbors. Ranch style homes on wide lots removed that neighborly familiarity.
In addition, suburbia began the isolation of uses from one another. No longer could people walk to neighborhood stores to purchase needed items. Suburbia killed downtowns in most communities. The towns with strong downtowns are those in which residential is very close by.
High rises are very isolating. However, I believe that there is a place for low rise (no more than three stories) apartments that can be viable living spaces for people if there is common green space and nearby public facilities.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Architecture, defined as the built environment,
, is extremely important to the psyche and politics of the people who live day to day within it. It is probably the most influential aspect of our lives that exists.
We take for granted the fact that we are surrounded by architectural ugliness. We assume that it must be so, that our hideous visual and sensual experiences are part and parcel of "modernity", and that we have no choice but to partake of them, and to share in them as best we can. And this is true.
But this world we have built around ourselves at great expense, and within which we live, is indisputably ugly. There is little beauty or love or idealism within it. It is not only ugly from an aesthetic point of view, it is also very uncomfortable, and profoundly unhealthy physically. Driving around in traffic, looking for parking spaces, and getting in and out of cars, is neither a physically nor a psychologically healthy way for human beings to get around. It isolates us from one another. It obligates us to travel in private shells, like high-speed mollusks that are impervious to anything exterior to themselves. In a sense, we have become the vehicles that transport us. They are us, in many ways. We have built our environment to acccomodate our cars, rather than ourselves... and as always, one's environment and one's self are inextricably intertwined parts of the same thing.
How this might relate to politics, I do not know. But as a painter who aspires to translate reality into the language of beauty, I cannot close my eyes to the world I see around me.
native
Beautiful comment!
This comment is incredibly beautiful in its prose and profoundly deep in its content. Thank you!
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Yes, and you can see the change
In what are called RPPC postcards (real photo post cards), on sale at places like eBay. The changes appear when this early 3 x 5 camera did, around 1905; the differece in feeling when you see the same street, or town, before and after cars is striking amd not cheering. The trees that grew right up to the edge of the road, the grass that grew into it are gone, the poeple who could once walk down or across a street freely in any direction now stay on the edges, the gas and coke signs quickly appear, the people now pose when a camera appears, the blobs of cars don't fit in with anything, and the horses and the vehicles they drew utterly vanish. But you have to take the time to look through hundreds of lifeless photos to get an idea of the human scale of life before the machine.