~ABlTATi~T~. Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 179-183. 1987. Pergamon Journals Ltd. Printed in Great Britain.

oak Reviews

Besim Seiim Hakim is one of those scholars who is beginning to question the whole- hearted Arab acceptance of Western values. Since 1962, as an architect, he has made a very detailed study of his own city of Tunis in North Africa. His ling~sti~ and Iiterary approach is surprising for an arcbitect, and barely touches upon the methods of construction, or on the climate. However, in the face of the Western onslau this emphasis may be correct, as many Western ideas are Literary, as, for instance, Ebenezer Howard’s treatise on suburban Utopia. One can also argue lingu~ti~ally that words like villa, air conditioning, slip road, urban highway and sector, come to condition and dominate the modern city’s organisatio~,

Hakim argues that the Arabic vocubula~, at ,&a ~intern~ ~u~y~d~, suq ~market and groups of workshops~, ~~~~~~~ (public water ain), sdkkf.2 ghair ~~~~~ ~p~vate c~~-~e-~~c~ has a history not of 30 years but of 1, years, and that since Islam is conducted in Arabic, cities from Morocco to Afgh~ista~ are rem~kabIy sirn~~. Such cities would be as nought without each component, just as, today, Baghdad would not be ~nsidered complete without an i~dustriai sector, nor Jeddah without a b~e~~ket approached by a lo-lane highway stretching several kilometres across the p~sati~g desert.

The book also comprises a detailed study of the building laws based on the vyings of the Prophet (~~~~~~) and the writings of Ibn al Rami, a master mason and student of the 14th century Kadi of Tunis.

The Kadi’s judgements would sometimes be quotations of the Prophet, for instance: “If you disagree about the width of a street, make it seven cubits” (3.5 m allows two fully laden camels to pass one another), On the other hand they would involve ~t~~retation of the ethical concepts of the i~terdepeudence of man with man, and concepts of privacy. The ~~~~~ says that a neighbour should not forbid a ~eigbbour to insert wooden beams in his wail, but on the other hand: “‘He who looks into a house without the o~up~t’s pe~issiou, and they puncture his eye, will have no right to demand a fine or ask for punishment”. Xbn al Rami shows how these quotations would be used in cases con~eming party wall disputes, disputes over the privacy of courtyard, roof tops and front door locations. Hakim argues that these laws built up the form of the Arab city. But can laws alone dete~ine the city? I3oesn’t the fact that the sun at mid-day is directly above one’s head not have something to do with it as well? The question why Arabic cities, when viewed from the air, are organic jumbles created by a people with an ingr~ed love of geomet~, is not ~swered. It would be as simplistic to say that 1st ~entu~ b~ild~g re~lations produ~d Pompeii, or the London building Re~lations, Geor~an radon. The difference between Pompeii and London has also to do with methods of ~nst~~tion, climate and attitudes to geomet~.

Harm only briefly states that the ~ou~~rd form of buil~ng had its ovens in cities as ~sto~~ly distant as Ur in Iraq. However from a very early phase, ?,OOO years before Mohammed, Jericho, Ur and Sumer were composed of walls ‘of mud brick and stone, with roofs of timber poles, palm or reed matting and mud, a~~ged around yards

ickens and the odd goat. These w re shared between f~ly groups itable corollary of bicke~ng and n. Investigation of ~abyloni~

c~neifo~ tablets will, no doubt, reveal many laws governing the disposition of beams in party walls and the a~a~g~ment of doors and windows onto streets and ~~~y~ds. The

179

180 Book Reviews

laws of buildings are inseparable from their construction method. The avaiIability of materials such as marble, turquoise, glazed tiles and stained glass also have an effect upon a city’s shape.

Similarly the structure of the city could not, untii recently, be divorced from climatic considerations, and by limiting the scope of this study to Tunis, it is not noted that the built forms of Jeddah and of the cities of the Yemen are the inverse of the courtyard - blocks of tenements which are cooled, not by the shade of courtyards, but by breezes blowing through the corners of the towers, and the refrigeration action of very narrow surrounding streets. The serrtabs of Baghdad are only mentioned in passing, but it is not pointed out that, as the watertable in Baghdad is very high, the brick walls and vaults of these cellars can, by evaporation, reduce the ambient temperature of the houses by as much as 20°C. The invention of air-conditioning has nullified the necessity of using these natural methods of keeping cool; but the enormous outpouring of energy needed to run air cond~tioRing are only beginning to be costed. To this frightening equation can be added the cost of transportation in the suburban city and the loss of ag~cuitural land.

Of course these criticisms are mere quibbling with the title of the book, which Hakim admits could have been, “North African Cities”. If he had called his book, “Islamic 14th Century Building Regulations and a Vocabulary of Terms Governing the Construction of Tunis, with a Statistical Analysis of Land Use of the Medina Core”, the readership might have been limited, which would be a pity, because these matters are necessary to understanding the Arab city. The social, religious and environmental consequences of forgetting how the traditional Islamic cities were organised will be enormous. Already the fabric of these cities is rapidly disappearing as it is of a short life, requiring constant restoration and reconstruction. As the termites attack the timber beams and lattice windows and the sundried brick crumbles, so one house after another tumbles down, never to be replaced as the language of the antithesis had come to represent the glittering alternative. Hakim does well to record the vocabulary of the old city in order that the philosophy of Arabic city planning can be seriousIy considered.

CHRIS JOLSON (ed.), The City of ~o~~ic~. Manse11 Publishing Ltd., 1985, 123 pp.

Sefore the title page of this book appears the foilowing quotation: “What can we say con~rning the aim of imitation? In other words, what is architecture supposed to ~itate? Surely not beer cans, oil rigs or space machines!” It is left to our readers to contemplate the relationship of this quotation with the i~troducto~ statement that conflict in cities is a positive element, a structure to evaluate cities and that this latter statement is the theme of the contents. The reality is that The City in Co~~i~~ is based on a conference organised in 1983 by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects with international contributors: Charles Correa (Bombay), Koichi Nagashima (Tokyo), Kenneth Frampton (London and New York), Demetri Porphyrios (Athens and London), Helmut Jahn (Chicago), Jac Robertson (New York and Teheran) and Peter Cor~g~ (Melbourne). Comments on the contributions of these international luminaries are provided by Peter Murray, Gough Whitlam, Neville Quarry, Philip Cox, Sir John Overall and Maurice Daly.

The volume is in large format, with generous illustrations - colour and black and white photographs, drawings and sketches. There are no references, no bibliography, no index. The publisher should be shot for sending out review copies with pages 57 to 68 bound in twice and pages 69 to 81 omitted. It makes careful textual reviewing all but impossible.

Those who attended this conference might enjoy this elaborate report of their meeting.