Abstract
How architecture can play the role of a risk marker? What are the expression of the risk and the logics of its spatial integration?
The architecture as constructed space can help us to learn about the multiple realities of the territory. Indeed, through its materiality, it provides information on technical intelligence and the optimal integration in the natural topography of the site. Also, through the uses and signs that crystalizes, it informs the social, the political and cultural logics of its production. Finally, architecture is the result of both spatial constraints and social standards built, negotiated and solidified by time.
Thus, Architecture seems to be an interesting media for the identification and qualification of risks situations, these being defined as the interaction between “hazard” and “vulnerability” of a “valuable thing”. It amounts to ask architecture dimensions like the materiality and the temporality, but also standards and rules that structure the design process and "the making architecture" under the risk pressure (natural and anthropic).
Through international examples from different cultural backgrounds (Tunisian, Algerian, French, Nippon and Greek cases), our demonstration aims to question the context, transmission, reception of the architectural design process concerning situations either integration or omission on the risk.
Introduction: Natural disasters: a universal problem
The trend observed in the recent decades shows a significant growth of disaster’s scenarios. These catastrophic events bring together a broad spectrum of natural phenomena with various geographical and temporal configurations added to different potentials of damage.
In view of the constant concentration’s progress of people, activities and wealth in relatively restricted areas, the resurgence of these natural phenomena with a high intensity generates the amplification of the damage’s process, which exceeds their geographical area of impact. More than ever, the international community is concerned and confronted to its precarious reality facing these vagaries of nature.
Through these findings, an international issue has emerged; it seems to have as a main aim the preservation of the integrity and the development of territories challenged by natural disasters. In this context, the idea of an international decade on the theme of the natural disasters was initiated by the North American Geophysicist Frank Press. And through the Tokyo declaration in 1989, this event has focused on the power of science and technology in the reducing damage caused by the natural disaster and also has concentrated on the importance of the education. In this perspective, the decade 1990-2000 has constituted an abundant period with a lot of programs studying natural disasters structured on five objectives to achieve:
Applying a current scientific knowledge
Encouraging scientific and technical initiatives to improve knowledge Disseminate technical information
Establish programs of technical assistance and technology transfer Develop educational formative activities
From these reflections, an International Day for Disaster Reduction, held every 13 October, celebrates how people and communities around the world are reducing their exposure to disasters and raising awareness about the importance of reining in the risks that they face.
In course of 2015, the theme adopted by the United Nations to celebrate the International Day for Disaster Reduction is entitled "Knowledge for Life":
“The focus of International Day for Disaster Reduction in 2015 was traditional, indigenous and local knowledge and the way that they complement modern science and add to an individual’s and societies’ resilience.”
This theme seems to reflect awareness of the duty of contextualizing risk and management approaches. Thus, changing the global scale reading to the local, it is interesting to note the existing paradox between on the one hand, the homogenous and standardized approaches of the international political disaster management (probably justified
by the humanitarian and economic urgency of the situation) and secondly, the diversity of postures and thoughts dealing with risks at each socio-spatial context proposed by researchers and local stakeholders.
Urban territory: Territory at risk
« Civilization is nothing but the product of the concentration of urbanization. »
Urban areas are special territories for understanding the socio-spatial complexity of human groups. Their transformations trace the social, cultural, political and technological evolution of a society.
Urban territory: a double dimensional structure: material / immaterial:
Going beyond the abstract and absolute substance enunciated by Newton and Kant and anchoring in Leibniz's logic, urban space becomes a stack of measurable space and classifiable substances (metric and topographic) added to evolving social constructions (Jacques Lévy). At the interface of geography and sociology, space becomes territory since it engrams social dimensions and subjective constructions (Jürgen Habermas). As Henri Lefebvre says: urban space «... is not only organized and established, it is also modeled, appropriated by any group, according to its requirements, its ethics and aesthetics ... »1 (1972).
In short, territories are the result of the interactions between space and society; they can be defined through their material configurations, immaterial readings and stakeholder networks.
However, this research is interested in territory as re-ordination of space (Claude Raffestin, 1986) by a human presence in a specific context. So this reflection is at the crossroads of a spatial form "natural" and a product space (Di Meo).
Urban territory: territory at risk:
Through their social and spatial patterns added to their dynamic organization, urban territories are privileged spaces for the risk’s location (Pigeon). Indeed the concentration of a multitude of interactions and exchanges (economic, social) in a limit space perimeter may cause risk situations. Those circumstances are amplified by the strategic value of the stakes and the vulnerable state of the urban territory.
In addition, through their interactions with a Nature characterized by a perpetual dynamism due to cyclic laws and random phenomena, these territories are subjects to uncertain and hazardous disturbances. Thus, the urban area can be considered as the context of the emergence of urban risks which, in return seem participate to shape those territories and to impact the restructuring and the evolution of those areas. Actually, urban risk coupled with the notion of security and insecurity contribute greatly to building the reputation of the places. As Valerie November (2002) says: « The risk is seen as an element participating actively and intrinsically to territorial transformations, able to score some areas over the long term and even be "readable" in the landscape. »2.
So, to approach risk and urban in a global perspective, we must looking at the construction of a complex object both resulting and active. This system can be made by the consideration of a series of tangible and intangible, human and non-human parameters, with various temporality and spatiality.
Moreover, historical approach must be considered in the analysis of urban planning and risk’s management. This analysis helps to focus and to consider the spatial stratifications that echo to society’s evolutions, conjunctures and crises. In this sense, during its evolution, the urban territory has various internal dynamics between the productive forces and pulsing stimulating risk-taking to achieve the issues considered for some actors as fundamental to the expansion of the city; but also repulsive forces that hinders the enhancement and development of this area depends on other territories. This process of the risk’s instrumentalization manipulates the various representations of different issues: economic, politic, identity, security. Thus this procedure creates a multitude of conflict situations regarding ownership of the land. Moreover, the multiplicity of architectural and urban configurations seems impacting significantly on the way to experience the city and thus interact with the notion of risk in both its impulsive and repulsive dimension. In this logic, the risk can be considered in terms of contradictions: contradictions between different risks, which reflect and express conflicts of interest, contradictions between collective interest and individual one, contradiction between social groups, between regions, and value systems. (Metzger,D’Ercole citing
1 «… n’est pas seulement organisé et institué, il est aussi modelé, approprié par tel ou tel groupe, suivant ses exigences, son éthique et son esthétique… »
2 « Le risque est vu comme un élément participant activement, intrinsèquement, aux transformations territoriales, capable de marquer certains espaces sur le long terme et même, d’être « lisible » dans le paysage. »
Borraz 2011). In summary, study the history of the territories under the Risk prism can inform us about the various logics that led to the expansion of those areas.
« The world of the city, in essence, is over, until our most recent experience. Urban changes, legal and territorial, urban and administrative, are accomplished without anyone really exorcises the initial form». (Roncayolo, 1990)3. Thus, the consideration of risk seems to impact on the location and the morphology of the territory. So, in order to develop this idea, this paper aims to demonstrate how architecture considered as manifestation of urban area can act as a risk marker (through its materiality, its uses and its evolution).
Architecture as a risk marker
Architecture: an inhabited significant materiality
Architecture, as a space built, can inform us about the multiple realities of a territory. Indeed, through its materiality, it provides information on technical intelligence and integration with the natural topography of the site. Through the uses and signs that crystallizes, architecture learn us about the social and cultural logics of material and economic production. It is the result of both the spatial constraints and social norms built and solidified by the time (Guy Di Méo – Daniel Pinson 1993).
Placed at the intersection of three dimensions of human existence, namely the natural, socio-cultural and constructive dimensions, architecture can be viewed as a continuum of manifestations of the presence and evolution of a human group on a geographical territory.
In light of this triadic construction, several dialectical tensions can be developed; their main objective is to inform and to document the architectural and urban analysis especially from the perspective of risk. However, it seems necessary to point the dynamism of these dialectical tensions influenced by the evolution of the society:
Architecture: Nature versus Culture Architecture: Innovation versus Heritage Architecture: Local versus Universal Architecture: Technique versus Social Architecture: Informal versus Formal
Figure 1. Triadic structure of the Architecture Architecture: Marker of the city’s evolution
« I have always thought that the materialization of the architecture does not take place when it emerges, but when it is built. Otherwise it has no meaning. Vernacular architecture, born on the spot, shaped by the constraints, is more contextual definition. His strength, along with its fragility, is the fact that it is in the permanent and not in the event.»4
(Patrick Bouchain, 2010)
3 « Le monde de la ville, par essence, est fini, jusqu’à nos expériences les plus récentes. Les changements urbains, juridiques et territoriaux, urbanistiques et administratifs, s’accomplissent, sans que l’on exorcise réellement la forme initiale. » (Roncayolo, 1990)
4 « J’ai toujours pensé que la matérialisation de l’architecture n’a pas lieu au moment où elle se dessine, mais au moment où elle se construit. Sinon, elle n’a pas de sens. L’architecture vernaculaire, née sur place, façonnée par les contraintes, est par définition plus contextuelle. Sa force, en même temps que sa fragilité, vient du fait qu’elle se situe dans la permanence et non dans l’évènement. » (Patrick Bouchain, 2010)
Tunis: Historical reading / evolution
Tunis is the capital of Tunisia, it is the first economic center of the country, in which seat all the main political and administrative powers. The interest of this research focuses on the historical center of the city, indeed the multitude of present urban models, the plurality of social logics and finally natural constraints mean that this scope can significantly document the relationship between urban and risks "naturally occurring"
This part consists of the selective reading of Tunis’s history. It attempts to trace the logics of the constructions of different territorialities of this area by focusing on integrating natural site, the interplay of actors and resulting urban and architectural materiality. It‘s in tracing the history that we inform the integration logics and cracks governing urban today.
Geographical context
Tunis is built in an old morphological bowl filled with recent sediments composed with slime and clay and also on small colonies composed of limestone's formations or sandy clay.
Moreover, Tunisia occupies the northern edge of the African plate. So, Tunis is near the tectonic fault Eurasia – Africa solicited by subduction movement. Tunis making it very vulnerable to seismic movement
Therefore, Tunis is highly vulnerable to seismic movements.
Figure 2. Map of Tunis Bay performed by the hydrographic service of the French navy in 1887 (source J.Revault, 1974)
Vernacular period:
A reading of the physical part of the implementation of the Tunis Medina seems to reflect an intrinsic intelligence to that territory. The area has being composed of a complex natural landscape allowing various integration logics. In the geomorphological preserve the site, the medina of Tunis is the oldest settlement in the area, is situated atop a hill and down through the gently sloping hillside leading to the lake of Tunis, giving back to the sebkha Sedjoumi. This choice of location seems to have several justifications that go back to the origin of the history of the medina and its integration logic. Contrary to the logic of historical settlement of Carthage, seaport city open to the sea, the founders of the medina with a defensive logic but also open to maritime trade, siting high on the hills, in bottom of Tunis Lake perfectly meets the expectations of the time.
Through the practice of Maliki jurisprudence, understanding the logical integration of the concept of ownership suggests that the Medina is understood as three-dimensional structure implying such entanglement of private places with collective or public ones without corrupting each other. So Sabbaths those volumes of private homes that come to step over public roads of varied scales. Moreover, it is essential to notice the primacy of private interest over the public interest in the philosophy of Maliki doctrine applied in the Medina of Tunis. This norm seems to have significantly impacted the image of the Medina and the conditions of its roads.
Logic establishment in the natural site: Intelligent implanting in natural site with the recognition of its topographical, geographical and climatic potentialities.
Actors of governance: artisans and local Tunisians lawyers
Source of governance: Local Tunisian power inspired by the Maliki doctrine
Figure 3. Medina of Tunis and its fortifications (Sebag 1998)
Colonial period: engineering approach
Unlike the geomorphological nature of the establishing’s site of the Medina, the European city developed on a natural site with a considerable vulnerability. Indeed, this new city settled at the bottom of an ancient morphological bowl filled with recent clay sediments. A succession of hills of low height (max 50 meters) generates the circular configuration of the site opening to the Lake of Tunis and giving back to the Sabkhat el Sijoumi.
« In low-cons of native city, between it and El Bahira, the soil is almost exclusively composed of reported land of rubble and detritus of all kinds urban deposits have slowly gained on the lake through the centuries.»5 (Monchicourt,1904).
Despite the vulnerability of the physical site and its poor soil crossed by open sewers (Khandaq, pl khândiq) discharging wastewater from the Medina to the Shott al-Bhira (Lake of Tunis), the choice of this territory to implement the European city is rooted in logic preservation of authentic urban fabric of the Medina (which was not the case with the Medina of Alger) but also to valorize the waterfront site with the faith in progress and technicality to neutralize and bypass the natural vulnerability of the site.
Indeed, It seems evident through reports of the French administration that the lowlands between the Medina and al-Bhira Shott (Lake of Tunis) is a territory of issues, which justifies the development work undertaken at the end XIX century in this area.
Logic establishment in the natural site: the consideration of the natural site as a manageable and shapeable support by the contribution of technology. Also it’s a strategic location that meets the economic and trade issues
Actors of governance: engineers (French and Italians) from hygienist movement. Also French architects subordinate to the engineers for realizing the embellishment plans of the city.
Source of governance: French protectorate’s administration
Figure 4. Representation of Tunis
5 « En contre-bas de la ville indigène, entre elle et El Bahira, le sol est peu près exclusivement composé de terres rapportées, de décombres et de détritus de tout genre dépôts urbains ayant lentement gagné sur le lac à travers les siècles. » (Monchicourt ,1904)
Figure 5. Map of Tunis 1906 (Sebag , 1998) Colonial period: modernist approach
«France comes with its administration and its laws, its schools, clinics and hospitals, ports, roads, bridges and railways, its public works and safety. It can give more and this is the order in the city, the generator order ensuring the harmonious development of the city or village, which sets the stage, away waste, avoids lost time.»6(Eugene
Claudius Petit – French minister of the reconstruction and town planning)
Considered as territory of allies, Tunisia is the target of an intensive attack during the Second World War. The ravages are important to the point that it is the only one among the three countries of North Africa to be considered a disaster area.
Being under the French protectorate since 1881, Tunisia is part of the French territory. Thus, following the disaster, France has supported the reconstruction that took place under control of the French administration under the leadership of a young team of architects and urban planners French on site.
The value of the consideration of this historical episode is double, it consists, first, in the understanding of the interweaving of modernist and hygienist thought initiated by the Venice Charter under the leadership of a number of architects like Le Corbusier and second, in the analysis of the Tunisians context and urban complexity of the site. The major aim of this reflection is to consider the problem of the natural environment, physical and climatic constraints in the fabric of the city.
In which way did the logic of think universal and apply locally supported by French administration impact on the architectural and urban design in the context of this modern approach?
The main contributions of these modern architects consist in their approach and in their natural site hygienist reading grid of the territory. In fact, special attention is given to the principles of sunlight, ventilation and volumetric articulation of the buildings. Thus, these developers have expressed strong criticism of the choice of the European
6 « La France vient avec son administration et ses lois, ses écoles, ses dispensaires et ses hôpitaux, ses ports, ses routes, ses ponts et ses chemins de fer, ses travaux publics et sa sécurité. Elle peut donner davantage et c’est l’Ordre dans la cité, l‘ordre générateur qui assure le développement harmonieux de la ville ou du village, qui en fixe les étapes, écarte les gaspillages, évite le temps perdu. » (Eugene Claudius Petit – French minister of the
City site (previously developed), whereas it is the opposite of what should be the location of a modern city. From their analysis of the Tunisian perimeter, these architects and town planner have proposed logic “satelitaire” to extend