The Modern appropriation of urban space through Mediterranean medinas
Résumé
Complex dialectic between Modern Movement and the Mediterranean finds in Moroccan experiences in the fifties an important shift, addressing relations between city and human perception. Both technical and cultural needs moved architects of Service de l'Urbanisme, led by Michel Ecochard since 1946, to call into question the paradigm of vertical city used to be proposed in Europe. Typical issues of Modern research on collective housing - standardization, economy, density – are thus influenced by traditional medinas, having been conceptually rethought, turning over Le Corbusier's vertical aggregations on the horizontal surface of landscape.
New horizontal density, experimented for the first time in Morocco in the early fifties, was driven by several factors: regional influence of the city as well as constructive and practical issues, that let Modern architecture rediscover the value of urban space. Ecochard design investigates the structure of the voids of the traditional city, interprets the different typologies, their hierarchical relationships and scale modulation along with their socio-cultural meanings.
Through Moroccan medinas, Modern Movement in post-war period discover again the sense of urban space and of the deep-rooted structure of the city. Issues that would have considerable success in the subsequent realizations in Morocco as well as in CIAM debate and in European experimentations, starting from Adalberto Libera up to Alvaro Siza.
City as urban fabric reconstructs human scale, finding a new social centrality for public space. Into concatenation of voids, light and shadow, spaces properly calibrated for collective life testifies the semantic richness of spontaneous settlements and corroborates the Mediterranean vocation of Modern architecture.
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