A MANIFESTO FOR ALEPPO
Aleppo was born in ancient times as an Hellenistic colony, placed in the middle of a system of commercial traffics between Persia, Anatolia and Iraq; later on, it has been established itself as a Port-city in the desert, located in the middle between the Eufrate river and the sea, crossing of worlds and caravan routes.
Today the city is waiting for something more than a project. Aleppo looks forward to a rebirth starting from its foundations, from the depths of its urban history and from its forma urbis. It doesn’t need only a project indeed, but a strategy, a great works plan that would be able to communicate and interpret historical knowledge and urban renovation.
The citadel, the emporiums and the souks, the mosques and their minarets, the sanctuaries and their tombs, the archaeological sites suggest the way towards the future, more than recalling the past. It isn’t possible to ignore its most ancient monuments, signs of a strong historical and cultural identity.
Starting from what has been left, because what is left is the connection between new and old, memories and future research.
Destruction as re-construction, as first element of a new project in order not to forget the necessary and extreme act that would be able to connect the permanence of memory and the thought of the renovation’s strategy.
The past city and the future one could live together in the present if only it will be able to refuse any kind of imposition’s form.
The city’s rebirth has to start from the reconstruction of its monuments, located into the historical centre, along Kandar al Rum. Meanwhile, the planning strategy will aim at the process of gardens and park’s redrawing, that partially follows the curvy line of the Queweya river, and partially the external circular ring that represents the union between the contemporary city’s big empty spaces.
Two realities that face each other, located between abstraction and reality: on the one hand the stone city’s magmatic matter, on the other hand the modern city’s urban imprint, whose irregular geometry encloses, like a treasure chest, the ancient city’s heart.
So the ancient city will grow up with the new one, with the same image’s fervour and evoking strength that have contributed from the beginning to make Aleppo bigger and greater.
A concentric project strategy. Two rings: the stone city and the green city
If we should lose our roots, which our cultural references would be? Which kind of particular sensation of disorientation would result from it? What would happen if we should lose our origins and the chance of not recognizing their founding values? The disorientation’s feeling originated by the contemporary condition’s appearance of Aleppo, whose ruins of the city destroyed and raped by the war show themselves to the world, demands a reflection about how the architecture could re-interpret what is left and can influence the city’s rebuilding project and its urban and civil future.
The reflection about the different formative phases of Aleppo’s urban pattern is related to a deeper research, connected to the characters of the city that are located on the Mediterranean Sea. Guarantor of civil, cultural, artistic and architectural models exchanges, the Mediterranean Sea has allowed the development of mixtures and interesting contaminations related to the different cultural influences. The heritage of the various phases of the city’s construction, emphasized by the use of stone, has granted the permanence during time of the forma urbisand of a specific morphological character. In some regions of the Mediterranean Sea, where the urban morphology and the original architectural characters were similar to those imported by Romans, that characteristics have affirmed with force, promoting the conservation of the city’s original aspects. Especially in the Big Syria Region, the permanence of the roman centuriation’s tracks and its previous phases, is stronger because in that regions the Islam advent hasn’t represented a breaking element with the ancient tradition. Syrian cities, differently from many other European cities, that with the ending of the Roman Empire have crossed a period of stasis, have enjoyed a new creative propulsion, keeping the same main lines of the previous urban structure, even if including new aggregative logics. In this context Aleppo takes the look of historical permanence during time and – because of its being made of stone – a city that has preserved for 5000 years of uninterrupted urban history, and keeps all the different structures’ tracks, whose stratification along time has originated the last phase.
Placed in the middle of a big caravan routes’ network between Mesopotamia, Armenia, Turkey and the Southest region of Syria, Aleppo has enjoyed profitable cultural exchanges during time: indeed, from the pre-Hellenic age to the pre-modern one, Aleppo has represented the bond between the spices’ street and the silk’s one. In the Roman and the Byzantine ages, it became one of the most important cities of Syrian pre-Islamic urban system, it assumed a very important role for the wine and oil’s commercial exchange and finally it established itself as a territorial hub during the final period of the Roman empire. The advantageous geographic position has assured Aleppo an important development not only during the Roman age, when the caravan routes’ system was employed by the Roman network, but also after it, as an international crossroads. As for the previous anthropological approaches, related to the territorial natural morphology, it is impossible leaving out of consideration the tell, artificial or semi-artificial and regular uplands, shaped by materials stratification. An example of social identity is the city’s pre-Islamic Acropoli, the present citadel’s archeological site before Ayyubide and then Mamelucca, a semi-artificial and really impressive upland, a calcareous outcrop re-shaped by man’s hands, heart of the city and origin of the decumano massimo, ancient ridge that divides the city in different geometrical sectors. From reading Aleppo’s urban pattern on the French cadastral maps of the 30’s, has come to light that the orthogonal alignments of the urban pattern are oriented along the North-South/East-West axis. After a previous historical and cultural research related to the city’s origins, the planning approach moves first of all from the monuments, from what it has been left of them, from the ruins, in order to freeze the results of an anthropological destruction, that can’t be forgotten, because they are the manifestation of history. The sense of identification and recognition belongs to the city’s architecture, because it’s a transmission’s vehicle of a community’s tradition. Indeed, the construction activity will aim at the renovation and conservation of those buildings that have been considered as ideological and cultural identity and that nowadays are supporting elements of the city and the community’s architectural composition, representing an identity issue in the relationship between past and future, as memory and as a starting point, because monuments are the reason why the city lives and recognizes itself.
Monuments belong to the future. Destruction as re-construction, first element of a new project
Monument, as memento, in the meaning of being left, place of memory, testimony of a material community’s recovery, whose essence is immaterial. The Monument, so, as a city’s re-foundation action, starting from what is being left during time, whose remains, elements bringing memory, will be different from debris for their being re-used, and in the interpretation of the contemporary city. Monuments belong to the future, for this reason, they are distinctive signs of re-construction: you must start from the monuments for their being places in which people can recognize themselves. It’s not only the material reconstruction of the building, but also the need to recognize a place, its identity as a testimony of society and people’s life. We think that the ancient city’s monuments are the instruments to get to the re-foundation of the city, starting from the proof of what had originated it. This is why from the monuments’ debris “new ruins” will rise up setting themselves free from their vestiges’ status to become instruments ready to build a new future.
The monuments we chose as necessary for the first phase of the city’s re-foundation are enclosed within the ancient city walls limits. A first enclosure limiting the city of stone, and surrounded by the new ring of the green city: a second ring foreseeing the return of the inhabitants who had to escape from the stone city. A “concentric” project strategy starting both from the double faced principle of the monuments restoration, and from the green city building. Two rings: the first one belonging to the stone city and the second one belonging to the green city. The external ring becomes a useful instrument in order to re-think about the new city. We assume that the historical memory is not enough, we try also to link the historical memory to a new one. Both these systems, the one bound to the past and the one projected towards the future, belong to the same single strategy. The new monuments are what we try to re-interpret and to propose through the contemporary city dimension. The contemporary city is going to develop in the external ring, where the green belt will rule the urban system, holding together different themes: historical gardens, park of the memory, and the big ring that would become an infrastructural boulevard-system. We can’t ignore both costruction and destruction, so the first planning approach is the recognition and the documentation of the main architecture within the city, including the figures and shapes in order to be able to interpret them in practice, translating them in a new project for a new city. The monuments we have chosen in our project, have been translated in stone characters, fragments, remains remanding to the tragedy of the war. In the ancient city, the relationship will be established with passage of time and its effects on the city, starting first of all from the re-built monuments and fixing on the ground the urban blocks from which the monuments will rise again. A start point of the project in the history of the city from which, in a near future, we can begin re-building in the historical centre. After that, the residential city will grow following its own nature. At the same time though, we must think about the contemporary city’s construction. The green belt holding the historical city where the widespread urban pattern converges, could host a new satellite residential system, shaping a policentric city, configured in free-standing parts, a system composed by vertical elements will stand out against the edges of the city, recalling the well known and familiar image of the minarets, that have already crowded the ancient city.
The two concentric enclosures are morphologically different, but ideologically connected: the first one, civic cradle, where the citadel rise and on which the Roman city’s structure starts bearing clear signs of the Roman centuriation, and the second one, made of big green areas, which lies near the ancient city and the desert.
Monuments traces
Testo tratto da: Dal Fabbro A., Aleppo. Traces of future, Santa Lucia di Piave, Incipit Editore, 2017.
Workshop estivi di architettura | Università Iuav di Venezia
Armando Dal Fabbro, Camilla Donantoni, Anna Fabris, Matteo Piacentini, Francesco Soriani
Studenti: Abate Matteo Azzurra, Aganetto Ilaria, Baccega Nicola, Bellone Paolo, Bennati Anna, Biolo Daniele, Buiatti Laura, Capodaglio Claudia, Cararro Simone, Dal Medico Simone, Didonè Beatrice, Eustatiu Tiziana, Fabbio Matteo, Grilletto Mattia, Lenarduzzi Alice, Lorenzi Sonia, Marachella Giulio, Mazzon Giulia, Mendo Davide, Millosevich Filippo, Modenese Angelica, Morello Bayer Raynny, Noto Monica, Pellegrino Simone, Phung Valentina, Renon Alberto, Sanguin Alessandro, Tresin Laura, Turetta Manuel.
