Urban and Architectural Identity of Mosul. An Analytical Background for City’s Reconstruction

The city of Mosul dramatically represents a paradigmatic case where a condition of pervasive destruction of the built environment has moved the scientific research towards the investigation of possible precautionary strategies in safeguarding those structural characteristics that define the identity of the city. The study here displayed evaluates the elements that compose the urban phenomenon as operational and proactive tools capable to suggest criteria for a critical reconstruction of the urban structure, to integrate a consolidate historical identity with a new architectural intervention. Specifically, the aim of this research consists of detecting how the city of Mosul, although being a city of Islamic foundation – and thus displaying specific morphological and typological characteristics – has developed peculiar aspects affected by other cultural, religious, and geographical factors. And that is recognizable, for instance, in the settlement relationship with the Tigris river, and, in particular, in the construction of a monumental riverfront that often deforms the typical structure of the enclosure, otherwise persistent in the Islamic settlements. Then, those processes identified at an urban level will be extended to a typological one, trying to identify possible relationships between buildings and urban form. As a result, we expect to rebuild a formal and settlement identity of the city of Mosul by combining its individual and peculiar ways of growth, both architectural and urban. And this would have the purpose of enriching the elements to be taken into consideration in the process of defining an operational methodology capable of leading the practice of design towards more aware and responsible ways in dealing with the reconstruction process.