THE PRESERVATION FALLACY

NATALIA ESCOBAR CASTRILLON

MDESS CC

The cities of the Mediterranean can be read as part of a larger ecology, where the sea is understood as a frame of common characteristics that brings them closer than the solid continents to which they belong. The Mediterranean is a process of interaction and exchange that imprints its intense dynamism on the urban environment, hence the cities present stages of development are considered in this study as a step in the larger chain of evolution that the Mediterranean represents. From this context, European preservation theories that argue for freezing the inherited cities in time challenge the very essence of this built environment. The Mediterranean medina, as a theoretical construct, encompasses traditional Islamic cities resulting from the interaction of different cultures throughout the Mediterranean basin generating particular architectures and urban congurations which are intrinsic to the landscape. These medinas are seldom purely Islamic; they are frequently raised from foundations of roman castrums, and modied or appropriated by other religious groups such as Christian and Jews through time. Hence its fabric contains the stratigraphy of colliding civilizations presenting a challenge for the conservation practice. This study will be framed through an evolutionary taxonomy of the Mediterranean medinas aimed to provide a systematic approach to the different preservation initiatives or ideologies applied in these cities. The aim of this project is to discern urban patterns that could inform the designer in the process of updating the Mediterranean medina avoiding either its degradation or its tendency to become frozen organisms by means of preservation.

IN THE MEDITERRANEAN MEDINA

RETHINKING THE NILE IN URBAN CAIRO

A CITY REMADE:

A dire need for public space became articulated after the January 25, 2011 popular uprising, revealing innovative opportunities for design in Cairo and throughout the region. The citys urban development over the past two centuries has led to a point where most public spaces have all but faded. If one were to consider the Nile as a public space that has not been realized in this manner, an opportunity arises to take advantage of a natural geography within the urban fabric, allowing for a rethinking and repositioning of the citys relationship to the historic river. Rivers are strongly linked to the perception of cities, withdrawing from context, while simultaneously transcending the immediate, and relating to a larger geography and a new set of relationships. The Nile in particular reveals an opportunity to redraw connections between architecture and geography, creating the basis for emerging spaces of commonality. Through these spaces and a ferry proposal, one reframes unrecognized components, constructing awareness of scales beyond the projected frame of perception. Accordingly, reforming the understanding of the city by revealing and creating new continuities. This thesis poses the question of how contemporary Cairo, given its density and scale, can reclaim public space to inform a heightened understanding of place through the methods of 1) taking full advantage of a natural geography within the urban fabric, and 2) introducing a dialogue between the city and its river by re-thinking the Nile?

FARIDA FARAG
MAUD

A TOPOGRAPHIC JOURNEY THROUGH ARTIFICIAL LANDFORMS IN CITIES

THE VERTICAL SUBLIME

The construction of articial mounds in urban contexts has represented a consistent human practice of land regeneration over time. In both physical and conceptual terms, manmade landforms often conceal invisible processes of excavation, accumulation, and burial. Particularly necessary in densely populated environments, this activity has resulted today in a profusion of topographic reliefs that perform important ecological tasks as well as providing a renewed, elevated perspective onto the city. The focus of my research will be to look at major landform operations within urbanized areas and consider how they affect the vertical experience of open spaces. My argument being that the combination of topographic richness, recent formation of the earthwork, and intense urban setting, altogether determine a contemporary sublime experience. Also describable as the articulation of form, time, and perception, the heightened presence of these three elements question the traditional role of urban parks. With the modern era the activity of remodeling the land in congested environments has acquired more profane meanings and uses. The transformation of former landlls into leisure parks, the adaptation of rubble heaps into verdant hills, or the strategic manipulation of abandoned brown elds, are a few of the recent trends in the replacement of previously inaccessible or hazardous sites with public spaces for outdoor activities. In particular, the introduction of elevated outlook points or the physical obstruction of the viewing eld has allowed for topography to determine a new reading of architectural urban form.

FEDERICO DE MOLFETTA
MDESS ULE

Interior view of grotto at the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, Paris, France - Jean-Charles Alphand (1864-67) Frances Loeb Library Harvard University

Cave painting from atalhyk, Turkey *Vitruvius: Book One in The Ten Books on Architecture | **Michel Serres: The Natural Contract

PYROGEOGRAPHY

THE POTENTIAL OF DIST[URBAN]CE IN TERRITORIAL CLEARINGS

Fire is at the center of the collective. To Vitruvius, the discovery (and subsequent control) of re inspired the coming together of men, which sparked conversation, creativity and construction.* In this interpretation, re can be read as an essential environmental condition that is both regenerative and transformational. However, in recent decades, wildres have escalated uncontrollably and climate changes are affecting natural and built landscapes across scales. Aside from these environmental factors, the rapidly increasing frequency of brushres is symptomatic of a larger, global issue of socio-economic dimensions. Pyrogeographer Stephen Pyne speculates that the feral res of recent decades are, in fact, a measure of social unrest; they are as fully an outcome of the global economy as of the global climate. The 20th Century holds signicant milestones for the Mediterranean where shifts, both demographic and political, of the last decades have had two major effects created conditions prone to ignition: the World Wildlife Foundation reports land-use changes have been accompanied by severe land-use conicts. Fire has been consequently used as a tool to convert rural land into urban land, or to appropriate landmainly in countries where property boundaries are not clearly established. City fringes are most susceptible to wild conagrations. In the Mediterranean alone, each year, an estimated average of 600,000 800,000 hectares burn. (This is comparable to the size of the entire island of Crete.) This increase in the scale and presence of wildre opens a need for a rethinking of the territorya model of Mediterranean urbanism that is responsive and robust to re. As the United Nations announced in 2011, half of the worlds population lives in cities. In the context of wildres, ubiquitous urbanization has thus far only contributed to the problem. In light of these issues, this thesis proposes a future urbanism that could work with the re. The project is positioned at the intersection between the situational, contingent, temporal nature of re and the abstract, universal characteristics of form to imagine alternative agglomerations and settlement patterns. It aspires to establish grounds for the urban within a new totalitya pyrogeography.

SAVINA C. ROMANOS
MAUD

LINE, SURFACE, POINT

AN URBANISM OF RIO de JANEIROS GEOGRAPHY

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FABIANA ARAUJO
MAUD

CLEARING STRATEGIES IN RIO DE JANEIRO

TERRITORIAL RECLAIM

The space between objects has become places of opportunities in congested contemporary cities, as clear spaces are rare in contexts of intense urban densication. The challenge of decongesting, diffusing, rarifying appears as architectures other. The composition of congestion and diffusion operates in territorial dimension and is intensied in the context of informal urbanization. Clearing is proposed as a strategy to compose an architecture that engages with the built landscape to perform as an extension of the city grounds and absorb the organic nature of its events, infrastructural demands and gestures of improvisation. The architectural object occupies the city and is at the same time a moment of rarecation, of pause. Rio de Janeiro has been one of the rst Brazilian cities to confront directly the need for integration among spontaneous and regulated occupations in its process of urban evolution. The citys geography is a permanent mediation between its sinuous landscape and the sea. Rios nature has both integrated and divided the city. The recent penetration of the state into informal territories may be described as territorial reclaim, a process of reconquering unattended and illegally controlled zones. The concept of urban equipment, the pairing of public institutions to urban infrastructure, becomes central in reclaiming informal territories. This proposal considers that provisions of basic services such as sanitation, soil containment and water management may be strategically linked to other uses such as schools, clinics, markets and recreation. A new axis of urban equipment is proposed along a central valley within Complexo do Alemo to support both formal and informal agencies, creating adjacencies to foster the interaction between state infrastructure and local organizations.

MARINA CORREIA
M.ARCH I AP