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Bagdad Arts Déco is a seminal work for at least two reasons: first because it constitutes the very first overall research project concerning Baghdad published in French since the beginning of the war in Iraq,and then because the angle chosen by the author - who is preparing a doctorate in urban history at the EHESS in parallel with her functions as leading editorial project manager at the Editions du patrimoine - is not only an architectural one, as the work's subtitle seems to indicate, but also one that is essentially historical.
With « modern » domestic architecture as her point of departure, her extensive knowledge of the bagdadi field, through the reproduction of historical maps, plans and high-quality photographic prints taken between 2003-2006, Caecilia Pieri traces an eloquent picture of the urban life of the 1920-1950 era, which was marked by the British Mandate(1917), the advent of the monarchy(1921) Independence(1932) and, subsequently an intense economic, intellectual and artistic boom.
A preamble authored by the Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji outlines the drastic mutations which characterized this period (creation of a parliament and an organic law, constitution of political parties, modernisation of the educational system, importation of European consumerist ethos, ect..), which brought about fundamental societal transformations in general and more particularly in the urban fabric. As for the work's second introduction by the university researcher Ihsan Fethi, it focuses on the central role played by the traditional bagdadi master builders, the 'Ustâs'in the development of the « new » architecture highlighted in this work, notably through their mastery of brickwork - unchanged since the Assyrian era - explaining to a certain extent the stylistic and structural hybridity of the latter[1].
The work is divided into two parts. The first part - « Aspects of a capital in the making »- is, in our eyes, the most interesting. The author describes the different phases of urbanisation of the Iraqi capital, from the end of the Ottoman « occupation » up to the early fifties, an era about which Caecilia Pieri has already provided precious data[2]. The chronological slicing chosen (by decades) proves relevant in its revelation of the political forces at work - Ottoman, British, Hashemite leaders - in the city's development, in other words « in the propensity of politics to orchestrate the cycles of construction/destruction/reconstruction » (p.32), making a rupture oriented analysis necessary.
One discovers how the implementation of an urban policy intended to state the politico-administrative authority of the capital, and thus reinforce a feeling of national unity in the young Iaqi nation, also serves in fine the colonial project of the British administration. « The British master the territory by the implementation of an urbanism which is both modern and regulating according to their own principles. Through the choice of architectural projects and the style of constructions, they project an image policy which takes into account a complex political context, in that their authority must be implemented while respecting the structures of a free, independent, sovereign country » (pp. 42-43). On several occasions the author refers to the « subtility » of the British intervention in the field of Baghdad's urbanism and architecture, which apparently, consisted in an alliance of the imperatives of an institutional, administrative, functional and educational modernisation to the assimilation of traditional building techniques - « vernacular know-how »(p.47) - with a symbiosis of styles, its refinement, from Iraqi traditional ornamental art and, its efficiency, from « classic » European architecture.
During the Thirties, marked by the proclamation of Independence, Baghdad undergoes other major transformations. Its growing polarity at a national level (a booming commercial sector and national infrastructure, consequences of the petrol exploitation), induces a massive rural exodus. A phenomenon which develops during thirty years, deeply modifying the morphology of Iraqi cities and the composition of Baghdad's population[3], soaring from a population of 220 000 in 1930 to 750 000 in 1936. Construction works are in full bloom, the city expands considerably towards its outskirts. At the same time new state-imposed regulation in the field of urbanism are embodied by new styles and manners of construction ( development of plots, a grid-plan with large avenues, abandonment of the traditional central courtyard in the new houses, appearance of private gardens) as well as new ways of living (zoning defined by socio-economic status, and confessional mixity). In 1936 and 1937 Baghdad becomes a « Unified municipality »[4], the implementation of certain large-scale public works (the creation of new street-plans, the construction of office buildings, the demolition of the Southern city gate), the elaboration of a grid-scheme - whose implementation was complicated by the first military Coup - and, more specifically, by the building, under the supervision of a new « State architect », of a pavilion for the International Arts and Techniques Fair of Paris, « which became the symbol of an emerging new national sovereignty » (p.53).
The Forties will prove just as tumultuous. Against a backdrop of struggles between the British and the Iraqi Reformist party (the pro-German Gaylani's Coup, in 1941[5], the creation of the National Democratic party in 1947), the continuing rural exodus and rapid social evolution, Baghdad's urban organisation is marked both by a modernisation process and a « westernization » (p.57) affecting its morphology, the life-styles, and the reinforcement of socio-spatial inequalities. Beyond the rationalised circulation and occupation of urban space, the reception of urban modernity was illustrated by the transformation of habitat.
Influenced by European academies, the younger generation of architects seems « less attached to the preservation of a traditional familial life-style » (p.60) than to the importation of international standards (introduction of concrete façades on buildings, progressive disappearance of the central hall of houses, appearance of bathrooms and garages, etc). The individual housing embodying this architectural type was built along the banks of the Tigris, constituting the new neighbourhood of an urban bourgeoisie, with its wide and tree-lined streets. At the same moment, on the city's outskirts occur spontaneous settlements, « rectangular hut like structures containing entire families of peasants having poured in from all over the country » (p.58).
The extension of these dwellings, called sarifahs, reflects the growing proportion of those excluded from modernisation. Their situation, essentially on the fringes of the city, is the sign of a pronounced social segmentation of the Baghdadi urban space.
The historical panorama proposed by Caecilia Pieri is extremely synthetic, as is acknowledged by the author. One would have liked the study to go beyond the year 1950. The years which precede the 1958 national Revolution, during which the city's urban fabric is in full expansion, are thus hardly touched upon. Yet the work is remarkable in that it shows to which extent all along this period Baghdad came to possess a constantly renewed array of urban and architectural forms, which form the complex but original foundation of Baghdadi urbanity, while revealing the existence of very close connections between the cycles of urban evolution and the construction of national identity.
In the second part of the study, Caecilia Pieri chooses seven « perspectives/ angles » to define and qualify with more precision (more technicality as well) Baghdad's modern domestic architecture. A focus on the regularity of the new city's urban scheme, which the author says to be « still perfectly legible and by large still functional in most of the neighbourhoods of central Baghdad » (p.73), the eclectic/ hybrid styles of the façades ; the central courtyard (hosh), « simultaneously representing the heart (by its axial position), the lungs (by its openness) and the central artery of all domestic circulation » (p.100), whose reduction to a covered hallway, then to a simple corridor, in the architectural schemes of the forties inaugurates a certain individuation of domestic space ; the roof-terraces, which seem to have resisted all the social and morphological evolutions ; the arc and the column, recurrent vocabulary of a traditional architecture surprisingly reinterpreted in modern times ; the sculpted brick detail on the façades, bearing testimony to the Ustâs' virtuosity ; the painted glass windows and the cement floor tiling whose array of colours seems infinite.
This list, which of course is in no way exhaustive, enables the author to organise her photographic prints, which given the extreme rarity of available data concerning Baghdad, are much more than mere illustrations. Moreover this same list seems to lay the foundations of an inventory of Baghdad's built heritage, an as yet incomplete one, given the city's profusion of architectural and urbanistic treasures. Situated at a distance from strategic sites, most of the residential neighbourhoods dating from the colonial and post-colonial eras have been spared by the bombings and destruction. Yet, as ironical as it may seem, as the Baghdad reconstruction scheme gets under way - of which a part will be entrusted to a Lebanese architectural cabinet- this brick architecture, which constitutes a coherent modern urban landscape, appears to be all the more threatened. Without it ever being asked outright in the work itself, the question of the preservation of this fascinating and little-known heritage is manifest throughout Caecilia Pieri's text, as an evidence, but as an urgent issue as well : indeed a certain number of factors may delay the elaboration of an authentic heritage scheme for Baghdad.
On the one hand, the preservation of urban heritage does not seem to be part of the public powers' priorities. They seem more interested in the preservation of antique sites and archaeological remains, as is shown by the assent given to the projects concerning the clearing of the Najaf and Kerbala sanctuaries, which will entail the tearing down of the old city sectors, as has been done in the Mecca or Medina. On the other hand, it is much to be feared that the powers in place succumb to the surgical temptation of the tabula rasa, as a rejection of the colonial period but, more importantly, as a way of getting rid of the preceding regime. To that one must add the perspectives of profit of a « Lebanese-style » reconstruction scheme, which per se will be more important and bring more visibility than the economic consequences one can expect from the rehabilitation of modern domestic heritage. Caecilia Pieri's underlying plea for the integration of a heritage policy to a scheme of urban development[6] gives us an insight into what such a heritage preservation policy implies in terms of difficulties and in terms of the stakes at hand.
Finally, Bagdad Arts Déco brings to light fascinating aspects of Baghdad's urban organisation during the first half of the twentieth century, a period marked by an authentic urbanistic upheaval having given shape to the modern city. For, beyond the architectural and historical analysis of this upheaval, the work proposes for the latter phenomenon several 'keys', sociological and geographic readings, notably through the vector of urban mixity. Whereas the tendency these days is, as is the case in other Middle-Eastern cities, toward a socio-spatial fragmentation of the Baghdadi urban space ( for instance as a consequence of the separation between Shi'i and Sunni areas into homogeneous areas, which in turn incites Christians to leave), the neighbourhoods built during the period covered by this work were not edified on the basis of an ethnic, tribal or confessional belonging, but on that of a socio-economic status which corresponded to an emerging middle class. Still standing and still inhabited, they are the last vestige of this process in a more and more fragmented city: beyond purely heritage-linked preoccupations, these constitute an authentic laboratory in which a certain form of mixity prevails, the manifestations of which are becoming rarer and rarer throughout cities of the Arab world today.
The author chose to present an illustrated and synthetic approach of this singular urban organisation, but was any other approach of the Baghdadi field possible, in the absence of any contemporary study ? May Bagdad Arts Déco stimulate other researchers to come and study the Baghdadi field, and even Iraq in its entirety!
Images from Bagdad Arts Déco
Caecilia Pieri, Bagdad Arts Déco : Architectures de brique 1920-1950 Paris, L'Archange Minotaure, collection L'âme du monde, 2008,
Language: French
160 pages
49,90 euros
ISBN: 978-2-35463-032-4
Original review in French:
/www.espacestemps.net