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Issue 6 - Middle East 1

Positions (February 2012)

Recent history has moved the “architectural” idea of the Middle East from that of a petrified place where nothing changes to that of a site of immense opportunities where everything is possible, albeit not without great perils. A selection from the material collected during the one year research and study trips to the area depicts some of the many facets of places that do not rest in the domain of decent origins of our profession any more. To the contrary, we consider them the sites where its future, exciting possibilities are being tested, right now!

Issue 6 - Middle East 1Ivanišin KrunoslavEssays

A VIEW FROM ABOVE

by Krunoslav Ivanišin

In Three Stories on Painting and Time Orhan Pamuk traces the distinctive qualities of the Ottoman miniature back to a very remarkable ancestral event: the Mongolian siege of Baghdad of 1258. Architecturally structured way of “depiction of the world from an elevated Godlike position attained...

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Issue 6 - Middle East 1Ivanišin Krunoslav, Baumgartner MarianneEssays, Videos

THE MOUNTAIN, THE RIVER AND THE HIGHWAY

by Marianne Baumgartner, "On the Road" Video by Krunoslav Ivanisin

And Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. And The Lord showed him all the land,...

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Issue 6 - Middle East 1Samhouri Wael, Adanali Yasar, Ivanišin Krunoslav, Daher Rami, Arbid George, Baumgartner MarianneInterviews

POSITIONS 1

Interview with Yaşar Adanali, George Arbid, Rami Daher, and Wael Samhouri

DEFINITION

Yaşar Adanali: Defining the Middle East, its boundaries, different meanings, layers is by itself a very difficult, value-bounded and mainly a political challenge. Especially, when one looks at the region from the perspective of its “western” neighbors, many...

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Issue 6 - Middle East 1Kenzari Bechir, Adham Khaled, Ivanišin Krunoslav, Al Sallal Khaled, Hotz Anna, Baumgartner MarianneInterviews

POSITIONS 2

Interview with Bechir Kenzari, Khaled Adham and Khaled Al Sallal

Why are questions of identity and authenticity so central to the discourse on architecture in the Arab world?

Bechir Kenzari : As far as I am concerned, I think it is a wrong question, it is a false problem. In time of crises the issue of identity becomes a refuge. Eventually it...

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Issue 6 - Middle East 1Ivanišin Krunoslav, Baumgartner Marianne, Bellwald UeliInterviews

TRADITIONS

Interview with Ulrich Bellwald

There is a certain romantic aspect to the Middle East, very hard to avoid when we look at it from a European perspective: a mythical storybook place where anything can happen. How does the contemporary Middle East look from the inside, in terms of architecture?

After having lived for such...

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Issue 6 - Middle East 1Ivanišin Krunoslav, Khoury BernardInterviews, Videos

THERE IS A COMBAT IN EVERY CONTEXT

Interview with Bernard Khoury

And when we move from these private projects with a certain public purpose to the more “normal” projects like the residential blocks with very neutral, generic names, such as #183, IB3, #732, #893 etc? Do these projects for everyday purposes reflect the same experimental origin...

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