Form, structure and identity of places in the reconstruction of the city. Aleppo and Mosul: a comparison of two cases

Recent political and economical instability in the Middle East has revealed the fragility of the artistic and architectural heritage of cities. As in Europe following the Second World War, the systematic destruction of architectural heritage is sadly now common practice in territories afflicted by armed conflict. These circumstances push the architectural discipline to question how to reconstruct the architecture of the city. Considering reconstruction as a process of transformation that continues along the generative principles of the urban structure, this brief paper seeks to identify the operative criteria pertinent to defining the new physical structure of the city. Such criteria are born of a critical reflection on various factors considered fundamental in design practice: historical knowledge of the building, recognition of invariable elements in the urban structure, and an analytical understanding of the structurality and the perceptive qualities of places. Specifically, this study takes the cities of Aleppo and Mosul as experimental verification of these theoretical assumptions: working firstly on the reconstruction of the monumental system of the souk, and secondly on the rehabilitation of a historical sector of the city, spread along the banks of the Tigris River. Starting from these two investigations, this research attempts to define forms (or forms of knowledge) of the urban phenomenon that might be generalized, capable of suggesting a possible development of techniques and of modes of intervention.