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- Volume 1, Issue 2, 2012
International Journal of Islamic Architecture - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2012
Volume 1, Issue 2, 2012
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The Ruko: Changing Appearances and Associations of Shophouses in Urban Indonesia
By Abidin KusnoThis article explores the meanings of Chinese shophouses (known as ruko) within the dynamic socio-political and historical contexts of Indonesia. It argues that in order to fully understand this building type, it is necessary to move beyond its architectural characteristics or building typology and engage with the discourses of social perception and meaning production that define the thriving urban environment in Indonesia. Attentive to shifts in meanings across time, it shows how the structure of the ruko serves initially as a catalyst for political repression, then becomes a basis for economic recovery and finally serves as a site for identity formation. The article ultimately argues that studies of a building type should be more attentive to the negotiated relationship between architecture and identity and to the socio-political and cultural contestations within which the built environment is located.
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Artificial Islands versus Natural Reefs: The Environmental Cost of Development in Dubai
By Kerry RutzWhile coral communities world-wide are currently threatened by a wide variety of factors, Persian Gulf corals are especially fragile due to human-caused factor sranging from oil spills, industrial thermal and substance effluents and military actions, as well as harsh environmental factors such as high salinity, extreme water temperatures and tidal action. In the United Arab Emirates, Dubai’s renowned real-estate boom has especially compromised formerly protected coral communities with the construction and development of the largest artificial islands in the world.Environmental protests have helped call attention to the tragedy, but much more proactive protection is necessary to ensure the survival and health of these endangered coral reef habitats.
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From Marrakesh to India: A Colonial Maharaja’s Pursuit of Architectural Glory in Kapurthala
More LessThis article explores a case of feisty internationalism in India's Islamic architecture during the colonial era. An Indian ruler with a passion for building, Maharaja Jagatjit Singh (1872-1949), ruler of the princely state of Kapurthala, commissioned a mosque in his capital, Kapurthala, in the early decades of the twentieth century. Departing from convention, the archetype was not drawn from the subcontinent's mosque-building tradition, but from Morocco in the Maghrib (Muslim North Africa). The patron was an inveterate traveller and tourist who frequented Europe and also visited its colonies including Morocco. He was impressed by Marrakesh's landmark twelfth-century Kutubiyya Mosque that became the prototype for Kapurthala's Jami Mosque. Designed by a French architect, Kapurthala's Jami Mosque is a complete aberration in the subcontinent's Islamic history owing to its allegiance to a Maghribi prototype. It represents a unique, idiosyncratic endeavour by a non-Muslim ruler subscribing to western cultural practices and seeking inspiration beyond the scope of his home in order to raise a mosque for his Muslim subjects. The article asserts that the Maharaja's endeavour, sadly neglected both by the public and academia, deserves a place in the subcontinent's vast corpus of Islamic built heritage as an invaluable cultural resource to be safeguarded for posterity.
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Vakfiye and Inscriptions: An Interpretation of the Written Records of the Atik Valide Mosque Complex
More LessLarge-scale imperial endowments symbolized the munificence and permanence of the Ottoman Empire. They not only provided religious and social services for the communities built around them, but also served as effective instruments affirming a political ideology and projecting a desired image directly from the imperial centre. A textual analysis of the endowment deed (vakfiye) and epigraphic programme of the Atik Valide Mosque Complex commissioned by Nurbanu, the Queen Mother of Sultan Murad III, reveals the ideology espoused by the state at the time. On one level, the vakfiye affirms that the shift of the Ottoman polity from an expansionary to a sedentary one was a welcome and necessary step for the perpetuation of the empire. On another level, the images of Nurbanu and her son Murad were carefully constructed to rebuff criticism from those who argued that the mismanagement, corruption and factionalism of Murad and his court were putting the very existence of the Ottoman state into jeopardy. In these documents, Nurbanu emerges as an exemplary queen mother, pious and generous in nature, committed to the well-being of her son's subjects, while Murad is hailed as the quintessential caliph, capable of both upholding the tenets of Islam and preserving the integrity of the temporal Ottoman domain. As such, the Atik Valide Mosque Complex served at once as a clarion of the positive changes the imperial dynasty had initiated and as a nexus of extensive social services provided by the Queen Mother to aid her subjects who were feeling the combined strains of inflation, food shortages, social unrest and protracted wars.
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Dam Nation: Imaging and Imagining the 'Middle East' in Herman Sörgel’s Atlantropa
More LessFew utopian visions surpass that of Herman Srgel's Atlantropa, in terms of infrastructural, architectural and geopolitical ambition. Conceived in the interwar years and developed until Sörgel’s death in 1952, Atlantropa was an ambitious infrastructural proposal for a tightly linked Europe-Africa that was to be formed by damming the Strait of Gibraltar and the Dardanelles, and the creation of several transcontinental arteries supporting the flow of people and natural resources between the two 'civilizations'. Sörgel’s who emerged from a German school of geopolitical thinking that placed primacy on Lebensraum and the well-being of European races in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was one of the first architects to wholeheartedly bridge the gap between design and this form of discursive geopolitics. While touching on architectural elements of the proposal, this article focuses on the major regional planning and macro-architectural gestures articulated. Atlantropa not only shifted conceptions of Europe's geopolitical relations with its immediate neighbours, but also countered contemporaneous predispositions to eastward as opposed to southward expansion prevalent in German geopolitical thinking in the pre-World War II years.
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Reviving Kabul: Notes on the Restoration and Adaptation of the Great Serai
More LessThe Great Serai is a historic property located in Murad Khane in the old town of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. Dating back to the 1880s, the building was constructed using locally available materials and techniques. As one of the largest surviving properties of its kind in Kabul, the Great Serai is acknowledged as an important example of traditional vernacular Afghan architecture. From March 2007 to October 2010 Turquoise Mountain, a not-for-profit organization with a remit to preserve and protect Afghanistan's cultural heritage, restored and adapted the Great Serai for use as a calligraphy school and administration centre by the Institute of Afghan Arts and Architecture. From January 2009 to September 2010, I was employed to manage this work.
Focusing on the practicalities of construction in post-conflict Afghanistan, these notes begin by outlining the historical, contractual and regulatory context within which the project was carried out. This article explores the trials entailed in working in an unsettled zone without an established legal framework, proper records or planning regulations and building codes. A description of the process and philosophy that guided the design and construction work then follows, exploring the intent to preserve the authentic character of the building while updating it for contemporary usage. The final section offers a critical overview of lessons learned before concluding with a personal reflection on the 'value' of the building, both as a heritage asset and looking forward, a place of study, learning and creativity.
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The Relocation of al-Fustat Pottery Village: Evaluating the Results of Urban Redevelopment
Authors: Hala Nassar and Robert HewittIn an attempt to deal with environmental threats to the inhabitants of the Kum Ghurab district in Cairo, the Egyptian government closed the district's pottery kilns in 2003, jeopardizing the livelihood of potters who trace the origins of their workshops to the establishment of al-Fustat in AD 641, the first Islamic capital of Egypt. In response to this potentially tragic loss of cultural and social capital, a model development project was initiated to introduce modern kilns and commercial units as part of a new potters' village and arts and crafts centre. In 2010, the project was the subject of a field study and post-occupancy surveys of primary and secondary stakeholders in the new model village, the old pottery area awaiting demolition and a newly developed arts and crafts centre bordering the model village. Findings suggest that although, the project exhibits shortcomings related to the amount of commercial disruption, loss of employment and citizen participation, relocation satisfaction problems appear to have been addressed in large part because commercial relocation occurred nearby, and local housing was available for area potters and workers; and a new arts and crafts economy has been established to address threats from globalization and technological change that have taken place within the broader pottery industry over the last several decades, reflecting greater demands for high quality decorative products and a wider range of arts and crafts products.
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Book Reviews
THE FUNDAMENTALIST CITY? RELIGIOSITY AND THE REMAKING OF URBAN SPACE, NEZAR AL SAYYAD AND MEJGAN MASSOUMI (EDS), (2011) London and New York: Routledge, 316 pp., 17 b/w illus., ISBN 9780415779364, $53.95 (paper)
MANAH. AN OMANI OASIS, AN ARABIAN LEGACY: ARCHITECTURE AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF AN OMANI SETTLEMENT, S. BANDYOPADHYAY, (2011) Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 300 pp., 200 colour illus., 150 b/w illus., ISBN 9781846311215, $60.00 (cloth)
LIVING IN HISTORIC CAIRO: PAST AND PRESENT IN AN ISLAMIC CITY, FARHAD DAFTARY, ELIZABETH FERNEA AND AZIM NANJI ( EDS), (2010) London: Azimuth Editions in association with the Institute for Ismaili Studies and the University of Washington Press, 300 pp., 120 illus., DVD, ISBN 9781898592280, $60.00 (cloth)
BUILDING IRAN: MODERNISM, ARCHITECTURE, AND NATIONAL HERITAGE UNDER THE PAHLAVIS, TALINN GRIGOR, (2009) New York: Periscope Publishing, 237 pp., 156 colour illus., ISBN 9781934772782, $55.00 (cloth)
HASSAN FATHY AND CONTINUITY IN ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE: THE BIRTH OF A NEW MODERN, AHMAD HAMID, (2010) Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press, 205 pp., 117 illus., 13 colour plates, ISBN 9789774163418, $39.95 (cloth)
THE POETICS AND POLITICS OF PLACE: OOMAN IS TANBUL AND BRITISH ORIENTALISM, ZEYNEP İNANKUR, REINA LEWIS AND MARY OBERTS (EDS), (2011) Istanbul: Pera Museum Publications, 288 pp., 120 colour illus., ISBN 9780295991108, $60.00 (cloth)
THE SAFAVID DYNASIC SHRINE: ARCHITECTURE, RELIGION AND POWER IN EARLY MODERN IRAN, KISHWAR RIZVI, (2011) London: I.B. Tauris, 269 pp., 88 b/w illus., ISBN 9781848853546, $84.00 (cloth)
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Exhibition Reviews
Authors: Nadia Kurd and Cleo Cantone'MAGIC SQUARES: THE PATTERNED IMAGINATION OF MUSLIM AFRICA IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE', TEXTILE MUSEUM OF CANADA, MAY 18-NOVEMBER 20, 2011
'HAJJ: JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF ISLAM', BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON, JANUARY 26-APRIL 15, 2012
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Conference Precis
Authors: Carel Bertram and Charlotte Jelidi'The Spatial Turn in Middle East Studies: Interdisciplinary Methods and Approaches', Round table at the Annual Meeting of the Middle Studies Association, Washington DC, December 3, 2011
'NORTH AFRICAN CITIESIN THE COLONIAL ERA (NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES): URBANISM, ARCHITECTURE, HERITAGE. HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVISIONS BASED ON THE ARCHIVES', A CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY L'INSTITUT DE RECHERCHE SUR LE MAGHREB CONTEMPORAIN (IRMC), HELD IN SIDI BOU SAïD, TUNISIA, FEBRUARY 10–11, 2012
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