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Modernity and its Posts in Constructing an Arab Capital: Baghdad’s Urban Space and Architecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Caecilia Pieri
Caecilia Pieri*
Affiliation:
EHESS, Paris/Amman Ahlia University, Jordan
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Extract

This paper examines several historical and political contexts in which connections have been forged between modernity and identity in the field of Baghdad’s twentieth century architecture and urban space. Given that for some Iraqi critics, historians, or professionals, “westernization” is embedded in “modernization” and even to a certain extent in modernity, I’ll attempt to define the ways and the limits within which architecture and urban planning or urban space in Baghdad have been deployed in the different narratives of affirmation of an “Arab” or “Iraqi” identity.

Type
Special Section: Art Without History?
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1-2 , Summer/Winter 2008 , pp. 32 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 2008

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References

End Notes

1 Presentation within the panel ‘Art without History? Evaluating Arab Art.” Panel organized by Nada Shabout and Dina Ramadan. MESA, Montréal, November 2007

2 Bernhardsson, Magnus T., Reclaiming a plundered past: archaeology and nation building in modem Iraq (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005).Google Scholar

3 See Watenpaugh, Keith D., Being Modern in the Middle-East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Nasr, Joe, Volait, Mercedes, (dir), Urbanism imported or exported? Native aspirations and Foreign Plans (Chichester-Wiley: Academy, 2003).Google Scholar

5 Raouf, Layth, “Housing in post-revolutionary Iraq,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 9 (East Kilbride: Thomson Litho Ltd., 1984).Google Scholar

6 Qubain, Fadim, The Re-construction of Irak 1950–1957 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958).Google Scholar

7 Copperson, Michael, “Baghdad in rhetoric and narrative,” Muqarnas, vol. XIII (Leiden, 1996.)Google Scholar

8 Watenpaugh, op.cit.

9 Fethi, Ihsan, “The establishment of the Kingdom in 1921 marked the beginning of the National era,” Process Architecture 58 (Tokyo, May 1985).Google Scholar

10 Ghailani’s coup, 1946–47 Wathba revolt.

11 Bernhardsson, op.cit.

12 Qubain, op.cit.

13 Rifat Chadirji, Designing for New and Old Cities (Baghdad, n.p., 1984).

14 Ihsan Fethi, op.cit.

15 Makiya, Mohammed, Focus on Arab Architecture (Conference Proceedings, Arab-British Chamber of Commerce, London, 1984).Google Scholar

16 Chadirji, Rifat, Process Architecture 58 (Tokyo, May 1985).Google Scholar

17 Baram, Amatzia, Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba‘athist Iraq, 1968–1989 (Haifa, 1990).Google Scholar

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19 Sethom, Hafedh, “Urban Renaissance in Baghdad,” Albenna, vol. 4, (Riyadh: Dar al-Funun al-Sa‘udiyya, 1985).Google Scholar

20 And this, independently of the intrinsic architectural quality—or not—of the buildings.

21 Makia, Kanan, The Monument: Art and Vulgarity in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (London/New York: Tauris, 1991, 2d ed. 2004)Google Scholar. See Venturi, Rober, Brown, Denise Scott, and Izenour, Steven, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977).Google Scholar

22 For architecture during the embargo, see Souad Ali Mehdi, “Architecture in the Nineties in Iraq,” November 1999, Aga Khan Award for Architecture (American University in Beirut, archnet.org/library).

23 The BCD Project, “A Renaissance for Baghdad,” by Hisham Al Ashkoury, Architecture plus (Dubai, 2004).

24 Although some late-Ottoman areas still remain all over the historical center.

25 The current situation compels me to use the past tense, given that the future is uncertain.

26 Bianca, Stefano, “Designing compatibility between new projects and the local urban tradition,” Conference proceedings, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (Cambridge, MA, 1984).Google Scholar

27 Pieri, C., Baghdad Arts Deco, 1920–1950 (Paris: L’Archange Minotaure, November 2008), p. 160.Google Scholar

28 Any future urban design must take into account the current forced sectarian homogenization of the city and its repercussions in terms of habitat and urban practise. And this for the first time in its history, given that Baghdad ever since its foundation was an authentic cross-roads of identities; a dominantly Arab melting-pot perhaps, but one which was never homogeneous.