Clean Defences, mapping Rom culture and territory

Emily Moore

For nearly 800 years Romani, who constitute the largest ethnic minority in Europe, have migrated through the world1. Neither agricultural nor industrialised, they are economically dependent on surrounding societies, their nomadic and secluded ways often drawing much suspicion.
Diverse theories as to Romani origins, cultural validity and ethnic identity share the hypothesis of an Indian origin and a collective belief system called romipen.  Studies of how romipen organises the Romani built environment are confirmed by my own findings on an annual Romani pilgrimage from Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in France, to Rome.

Linguistic similarities between Romani language and Sanskrit, and genetic ties between various Rom clans around the globe and contemporary Indians, confirm a shared ancestry.  Roma across the world negotiate the perpetuity of their culture with pressure to assimilate into a host culture.  Because the Rom are an ethnicity without a designated homeland, their vernacular is not a regional material or style, but a strong tie to romipen — a belief system about the body, its place in the universe, and a myriad of pollution boundaries. Similar to the role religion plays in many cultures, romipen enforces both a collective identity and a ubiquitous isolation.

Despite 800 years of migratory dispersal from India through Persia, the Byzantine Empire, the Balkans and Europe, Romani settlements in England, western and eastern Europe and the Americas show clear similarities in the organisation and treatment of living spaces, demonstrating the importance of the built environment as a means by which traditions, taboos and cosmology have survived time, place and confrontation with a multitude of cultures.

Romipen [Rom coupled with the Indic suffix -pen meaning -ness or -hood] encompasses everything that distinguishes the Rom from other ethnicities. Most prominent under this code are the pollution boundaries that maintain the purity of the Rom culture. Romipen beliefs and taboos thwart contamination of both the individual and the people.  Romipen is fundamental to the creation and continuity of both symbolic and physical boundaries dividing Rom from gadze (non-Romani) cultures, regardless of place or site. 
Unlike western cultures, with their future lying ahead and their past behind, Rom do not organise themselves temporally; in fact, time has little importance compared to the body. The Romani concept of the body begins with a formal distinction between inside and outside. The outer self is a public presence that may take on a changeable persona determined by circumstance. The inner self must be kept pure, housing the ethnic being that sustains the individual and contributes to Romani people as a whole. The conception and codification of the rules of romipen ‘are resolved in their symbolic application to the body’2.  The upper and lower halves of the body are separated by the waistline as an axis mundi. This division determines various uses of space and strict distinctions between wuhzo (pure) and marime (polluting) behaviours. Because defecation, childbirth, menstruation and death are considered to be marime these processes must occur at a distance from the home and even the settlement. The distinction between the upper and lower halves of the body is also expressed in the manner and space in which all washing is conducted. Separate vessels for washing are designated for food, cutlery, the body, and clothing. To separate these activities, almost all personal washing and laundering is done outside the home, while the washing of food and cutlery is done inside in a more celebratory manner.

Many Rom settlements appear to be modest camp sites made up of campers, shanties, converted containers, or kit houses. There is only one entrance to the camp and the dwellings are placed in a circle defining an internal common space. The single entrance discourages outsiders and maintains a relatively continuous boundary around the site.  Besides the obvious distinction between interior and exterior, there is a series of thresholds that one crosses from the periphery of the settlement to the actual interior of the dwellings. These thresholds are defined by their degree of cleanliness. In general, the exterior of the site is untidy and considered a dumping ground for waste. This is not bothersome to the Rom who are predominantly concerned with the cleanliness and ornamentation of their immediate living quarters. Much like the treatment of their outer personal appearance, the Rom are not attentive to the public façade. It is their homes and the liminal spaces between them that are manicured. In many of the camps that I visited the transition from exterior to interior cleanliness was drastic. The periphery of the camp was often treated as a landfill, cluttered with any and every unwanted object. Passing the initial threshold, the clutter subsides and central common areas are almost always immaculate. La Foce camp in Genoa was overcrowded and thus lacked a large central space; narrow alleys between houses were considered communal and were kept clean by piling unwanted objects on the roofs.  The treatment of the interior and exterior of both home and encampment parallels the inner and outer body outlined in romipen.

boundaries
The boundaries of encampments range from the monumental, such as cliffs or large retaining walls, to permeable — gestures that imply a threshold, such as rubbish along the periphery. Each camp I visited established its boundary in a different way. Sometimes the natural landscape or urban elements were used as a protective shield. Where a site did not have a barrier, the Rom often placed their homes very tightly around the edge of the camp forming a fortified wall.  In extreme cases, fencing and vegetation completed the barrier. One of the largest naturally confined settlements is outside Granada in Spain, where up until 1963, as many as ten thousand Rom lived in the caves of Sacromonte.  For the Rom, these caves offered a natural barrier behind which they could isolate and protect themselves from gadze intrusion. Near Sacromonte another group of Rom settled in a ravine sixty feet below street level where they live peacefully in a state of invisible symbiosis with gadze society.   

Although barriers shield the Rom from the dominant society, the cultural clash between Rom and gadzo is becoming more tumultuous in western Europe as eastern European countries enter the European Union. Rom are travelling more freely and will continue to travel. Often viewed as parasitic by gadze societies, Rom depend on romipen and their isolated encampments to carry their culture.  Strict adherence to the romipen vernacular is unlikely to waver — after all it has survived 800 years of drifting through other cultures with non-nomadic vernaculars that challenge romipen.  One hopes that awareness of romipen as a cultural vernacular with deep historic links will lead to an affirmation of the unique and tumultuous symbiosis between these disparate cultures.

1  The word gipsy, or gypsy, derives from the word ‘Egyptian.’ There are several theories explaining why Gypsies are connected with Egypt, however at present Romani (Romany, Rom, Rrom, Rromani, Roma) is the prevalent usage.
The Romani word for non-Romani people is gadze (plural gadzo). It is not an offensive word; it means only ‘non-Romani people’. Other spellings and pronunciations have been widely used such as: gorgio, gadgio, gaujo, gawjo and gawja.
2 Okley  p80

bibliography:
Fonesca, Isabel. Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey. New York: Vintage, 1995
Hancock, Ian. We are the Romani People. Hertfordshire, England: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2003
Harvey, D, Ward-Jackson, C. The English Gypsy Caravan. London: Redwood Burn, 1986
Mayall, David. Gypsy Identities 1500-2000: From Egipcyans and Moon-Men to the Ethnic Romany. London: Routledge, 2004
Okely, J. The Traveller Gypsies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983 
Pearson, Michael, Richards, Colin. Architecture and Order: Approaches to Social Space. London: Routledge, 1994
Rapoport, Amos. House Form and Culture. Englewoods Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969      
Yoors, Jan. The Gypsies of Spain. New York: Macmillan, 1974  
     

Emily Moore.  'Clean Defences.'  On Site review, no. 18 Fall 2006
©Emily Moore and On Site review

Mongolian Migrations

Rob Story and Giovana Beltrao

Migration can be a comfortable pattern or a tumultuous struggle. A culture built on migration has it woven into life. Movement is integral, anticipated and essential. But migrating a culture out of that pattern can be a different story. 


The people of Mongolia have migrated for centuries, routinely carrying their iconic gers with them as the seasons changed. But now, many have made the last migration - into the city, the migration of a culture, a pattern of life, an economy and an architecture. The move is not only theirs. It is a global phenomenon over which a nomadic family has little control over the pushes, pulls and consequences.
People are pushed by nature, pressures on resources, a collapsed economy; pulled by awareness of alternatives to the hardships of traditional life, by the draw of the city's bright lights. The young leave and the traditional cycle collapses. The search for a replacement life is inevitable, but the consequences can be traumatic and adjustments complex.
The draw of the city often dumps people into an urban poverty worse than the rural one they hoped to escape. A new settlement pattern must be adopted, a new economy must be entered, accessing basic needs must be re-learned, and an architecture must adapt. Developing governments are seldom ready to cope with the needs, and neither are many families. Sprawling slums are the result.
The traditional Mongolian family is nomadic and self-sufficient, moving with its herds through the hostile environment of the open steppes from summer grazing to winter protection. Long-standing communal traditions of land tenure recognize which families have grazing rights in a particular watershed and where their winter camping spots are. When the season ends, it takes only a few hours to fold up the family ger, pack it onto a couple of camels, or into a creaking old Russian truck, and move.
Architecture is the management of environments for people and their activities. By definition it must be holistic. Good architecture embodies the realities of a community's social structure, cultural beliefs, environment, economy and available technologies and materials. Indigenous architecture is always good architecture, it has no choice or it disappears. Best of all it is innately affordable and without formal debt. The well-know ger (yurt in Russian), is a perfect example. It evolved over generations in pragmatic response to that very set of drivers. When the drivers change, the architecture will follow. The situation in Mongolia exemplifies the challenges in doing so.
The ger is designed for the pattern of seasonal migration. We are familiar with the ger's classic kit-of-parts design, the hardware components, but less familiar with the software components, traditional family roles, social structure, household routines and the community relations that the ger encompasses. Migrating to an urban setting changes all of those. The software components are the first to feel the impact of urban migration, then the hardware must evolve. On the land the squat, decorated ger door opens from the expansive steppe to culturally ensured hospitality. A visitor need never knock. The mandatory salty butter tea is always on the stove. In the city, the door is behind a high fence, the gate is locked, the door is locked and the stove may be cold with family away in the cash economy.


Four contemporary events dramatically altered Mongolia's nomadic norms: the rise of Soviet control in the 1920s, its subsequent collapse in 1990, a twist of nature and globalising communication.
Under Moscow's direction, supply-driven rural industries were established throughout the countryside spurring a wave of migration off the land as families opted to abandon their nomadic lifestyle in favour of sedentary employment. Many brought their gers with them while others took advantage of Soviet-supplied workers housing in blocks of typically poor quality flats.
The collapse of the Soviet Union triggered another wave of migration. Overnight, rural industries became unsustainable and collapsed. Former nomads were stranded in small towns without employment, and without the ability or desire to go back to the land. The option was to migrate again, this time into the capital, Ulaanbaatar.
Then nature kicked in with two consecutive devastating winters that decimated the herds of the remaining nomads and launched yet another wave of rural-urban migration, this time straight from the land to the capital.
Compounding all of these, globalised communication is beaming exposure to lifestyle alternatives into even the most remote rural ger with its satellite dish and solar panel attached to a car battery. Aspirations rise, migration accelerates.


Ulaanbaatar is centuries old having evolved as a trading hub and a religious base anchored by Buddhist temples from which nomadic monks provided far ranging support. During the 70 years of Soviet domination, large portions of the simple traditional core of Ulaanbaatar were transformed into the semblance of a developing 20th century city with a combination of grand Soviet public buildings, shoddy apartment blocks, wide streets, centralised infrastructure and central government land control. The social and architectural contrasts between the two eras are stark.
With the end of Moscow's subsidies in 1990, government resources to manage urban growth disappeared. The result is that about 70% of Ulaanbaatar's built-up area is unplanned, sprawling beyond the Soviet-era core in poorly serviced, informal ger areas.
The nomadic perception of free rural land usage is dramatically different from that of an urban sense of ownership with a cost. Government guidance to orderly development of land, infrastructure and economic development should come first as the framework for growth, but the pace of rural-urban migration far outpaces government's capacity. Families can't wait and the building is always first. Real life replaces planning. Government then struggles to overlay some form of land tenure and insert infrastructure into the organic form of an informal settlement.
Incremental processes of development and densification over time are readily evident in Ulaanbaatar's "suburbs". New families arrive on the edge and plant their ger behind a new fence. Whatever plan, infrastructure and control exist have not made the transition to urban needs. Someone will claim land ownership, official or not, and payment for a "fence" will be needed, but without recourse to a Central Land Titles Office. It may be hundreds of metres to the nearest source of water with a wheelbarrow to pay market prices  up to 20 times that of the subsidized urban core. The sanitation system is a hole in the ground. Food comes from a shop and shops want money and that needs employment.
In older ger areas a single "fence" may have densified to contain two or three gers and several contemporary structures built as the family grows, aspirations are realised, or relatives arrive to share the space. Gers may have even been replaced all together. Corresponding improvements to infrastructure, however, are usually far behind. Bankable land tenure is not in place. Primitive pit latrines remain frozen through the harsh winters, then melt in spring and flow into the dirt passages serving as streets. Coal, dung and wood smoke from thousands of rural stoves choke the urban winter air. The struggle to enter the cash economy can rapidly alter the familiar family structure with the men migrating for work, women leaving the house and kids on their own.
It is true that the perceived social and economic opportunities of the city exist, but for far too many they remain out of reach. Migrations will continue. Cities must embrace the dynamic processes involved and target the key points of intervention if the goals of urbanised social, economic and environmental health are to be met. With the framework in place, a new vernacular architecture will evolve.

Rob Story: a Calgary-based architect, urban planner, traveller and photographer working with human settlement issues throughout the developing world for the past 25 years. President of HABICO Planning + Architecture.  Giovana Beltrao: a Brazilian-born architect and urban planner who started working in the favelas of Brazil 18 years ago and continues to work on human settlement projects throughout the developing world with Rob and HABICO.

Story, Rob and Giovana Beltrao.    'Mongolia Migrates'  On Site review, no. 24 Fall 2010
©Rob Story, Giovana Beltrao and On Site review 

Fishing the Atchafalaya

Allons au camp!


David Courville

Here in Louisiana, Spring happens early and quickly. By the beginning of April, the fig trees are leafed out, the peach and pear trees have set fruit, wild berries are ripe, irises are in full bloom, crawfish are cheap and we’re waiting for the flood, the annual flood of the Mississippi River. What we’re really waiting for is the flood’s recession…and the start of Camp season.
8,277 square miles of Louisiana are covered by water. There are 4000 miles of navigable waterway, 7,721 miles of tidal shoreline, 6000 square miles of marsh and a whole lot of swamp in Louisiana. There’s a lot of water here, but it’s not as accessible as you’d think it is. Once you’ve gotten to a place where you want to be in the marshes or the swamps, you can spend only a few hours there before you need to leave.
There are 1800 square miles of swamp in the Atchafalaya River Basin alone, the largest swamp in the United States, where most of the photos in this article were taken. The buildings in the photographs are called Camps. They are the solution to being able to spend longer periods of time on the water.
Before the Basin was leveed after the 1927 Mississippi flood, there were communities in it occupied with logging, fishing, crawfishing, moss-gathering, trapping, frogging, crabbing, etc. If there were camps then, they were more than likely work camps. Leveeing raised the flood levels of the Basin to a point where the communities were flooded on a regular basis and the residents moved outside the levees. About that same time, the outboard motor became commonplace, World War II moved a lot of people from the farms into towns and the Basin, now more accessible, was the target of newfound leisure time.
Camp Culture
As one Cajun carpenter put it, when asked whether the impressive structure he was building on the Pecan Island cheniere was a house or a store, ‘Iss not a house; Iss not a sto’; Iss a Camp!!’ Camps aren’t houses; they’re not cabins; they’re not a place to go to get away from people. They allow people to get together in a setting where personal space is shared with bugs that bite, snakes that bite, alligators that really bite and lots of other creatures not that bad. There are different types of Camp, but they all have one thing in common: active, independent-minded people who want to be ‘at the Camp’. Income level, for the swamp Camp builder has, until now, been a minor consideration.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Camps were relatively primitive. Few had electricity. Some had cisterns. A few might have had generators by the 1970s. Now, you’ll see generators, electrical lines, water wells, air conditioning, TV antennas and even satellite dishes at the Camp. Typical activities include hunting, fishing, cooking, eating, gambling, water sports – nowadays, with the addition of more amenities, Camps are becoming more house-like and more family-oriented.
Camp Etiquette
It’s a job just getting to a camp, much less building one. Because they are remote and relatively small, being invited to a Camp borders on being bestowed with an award. You bring your best attitude and you make a contribution of effort to keep the Camp clean and organised. They’re a lot like small ships.
Site
There are two primary determining factors in situating a camp. If the camp is built to float, the site selection is more flexible. The Camp can be situated entirely on the surface of the water. Floating Camps tend to be placed in navigable areas outside the current of the river and its associated bayous. Man-made canals left over from oil-field activity are ideal because of the adjoining spoil bank which can be used for creating small yards, elevating generators, etc.
If the Camp is land-based, the site selection is limited to those areas which allow the camp to be elevated to a height above flood stage and the outdoor components to be on the water. These sites tend to be near an intersection of a bayou with a lake or river, or on the bank of a chute between lakes, where the spoil from dredged channels has formed a mound. On a larger scale, more Camps are situated in the lower Basin where flood levels are less extreme, or outside the levees, where the swamps are relatively protected from flooding.

Access: the procession
The procession from ordinary places to Camps defines the layout of Camps on-site, especially those that are land-based. Access is by boat, arriving at the dock of the Camp, from which there is a walkway to the Camp, often including a stair to the porch of the Camp. The walkway either traverses or bypasses the waterside pavilion, where most of the daytime activity at the Camp happens: fish fries, crawfish boils, swimming, fishing, crabbing and playing. On the water, there are fewer mosquitoes, there is usually a breeze, and there is the View.
Construction
The most difficult part of camp construction is building the foundation. It involves either the construction of a floating platform or the construction of a raised platform. This phase of construction requires the heaviest logistics: pontoons, poles, heavy timbers, etc. After the foundation is built, the remaining construction is accomplished with modular transportable materials (small pieces that fit in a boat):
– sheet materials like plywood, and metal building components
– roll materials like sheet metal and roll roofing
– lumber and boards.
Camps were and still are built from leftover or salvaged materials.
New weather
Recent hurricanes – Katrina, Rita and Gustav – devastated Camp populations, especially in the marsh along the coast. The coastal Camps have sprung right back up, larger and stronger and with them, so have land prices and the Building Codes. On the other hand, the Basin Camps managed the storm surges from the hurricanes and were somewhat protected from the winds. Unfortunately, accessibility to coastal Camps has become a financial hurdle, rather than a physical one. But the Basin and other swamp areas are the holdout for the middle-income Camp. Building codes aren’t enforced in the swamp, yet, and the sites are generally leased from the State for a reasonable fee.

Courville, David. 'Allons au camp!' On Site review, no. 21 Spring 2009
©David Courville and On Site review

Ice Fishing

Village Life
Paul Whelan

As soon as Lake Simcoe starts to thaw, the fisher folk decamp their ice huts and wait out the summer heat until the next winter freeze. Not all the huts get transported to land in time and some poorly-timed hut removals end up in the water as boating hazards. The ice huts are extremely straightforward structures which directly reflect the simple requirements of ice fishing. Most importantly, the huts have to be light so they can easily be transported off and onto the ice. Even during the fishing season the ice huts get moved around as fishers tire of their location and chop other more alluring holes in the ice.
At first and even second glance, the settlement pattern villages appear completely random. These villages do not have to follow urban planning conventions. All the careful rules that Canadians construct to regulate every aspect of our built environment are abandoned on the ice. This is somewhat due to the lack of jurisdiction. The federal government regulates navigable bodies of water. When this water freezes, the local townships and villages do not have any power over activities on the ice. This regulatory vacuum sets up some unusual situations. Local restauranteurs complain to the City of Barrie about the unregulated food (and alcohol) businesses that supply the ice huts. Beer, rye whisky and high cholesterol foods are an important aspect of ice village life. Alas the local authorities have no jurisdiction so the ribs and rye continue to nourish the villagers.
As always with humans settlements, there is an ordering pattern, but it is not based on the criteria that drive settlement on land. The ice is free and there is no shortage of prime real estate. Instead the first ordering principal is proximity to a public road so the huts can be dragged onto the ice. Public boat launches and marinas are perfectly suited. The second ordering principal is established by the fish themselves. While the idea of ice fishing may seem rustic, the fishers use sonar to locate fish which generally congregate in the deeper underwater valleys. This fish congregation is further encouraged by the release of live minnows as ‘seeds’ for attracting even more fish. The huts are scattered in response to water depth and winter fish habitat. This critical settlement imperative creates an apparent random hut placement on the frozen lake.
On the ice, sanitation is rudimentary. This particular ice village had a portable toilet. Ironically it is much cleaner than the more easily serviced toilet on shore. It might be possible that at minus 20°C and with a strong wind howling across the flat ice, the fishing holes may do double duty.

*
The huts themselves are tiny. They are designed to permit two or four people to sit in deck chairs huddled around one or two holes. There is often not enough headroom to stand. The design is driven by reducing the hut’s weight and heated volume. Even within these constraints there is some variety and opportunity for self expression. While ice fishing may seem a northern rural phenomenon, its popularity on Lake Simcoe, within walking distance of downtown Barrie, suggests ice fishing also has a powerful urban draw. Aside from an obvious love of fresh fish, what is the draw? Perhaps this is the ultimate thumbing of the nose at winter. The fisher people simultaneously experience the over-heated claustrophobia of an ice hut while floating on a wind-swept field of frozen water. After all, it is impossible to forget that first needle-sharp intake of breath when stepping out from the fug of a dimly-lit hut into the blinding light of a sub-zero day.

Whelan, Paul. 'Ice Fishing 2' On Site review, no. 21 Spring 2009
©Paul Whelan and On Site review

the ice huts of Lake Nipissing

Weather-causing architecture
Steve Sopinka

Every winter, the waters of Lake Nipissing in North Bay, Ontario freeze solid. The result is a frozen icescape, 875 square kilometres transformed into new territory for snowmobilers, cross country skiers, snowshoers and ice fishers. There is something intriguing about the reclamation of the frozen water — even more captivating are the ice-fishing huts that begin to appear and evolve into an ad-hoc frozen shanty village. These structures capture the eye of the prefab enthusiast, the mobile-architecture buff, the Ministry of Natural Resources and, most importantly, ice fishers who are reminded that fishing comrades are ‘out there’ and they are not. On Lake Nipissing, weather defines an incidental, accidental architecture.

If there is an architecture that has almost no cost, is void of conscious architectural style and exceeds the expectations of its dweller — the ice-fishing hut could very well be it. Depending on your need for comfort and your ideas of how to outfit an ice-hut, your hut may or may not begin to look like your neighbour’s. The list of materials used is both long and unconventional: used lithograph plates, recycled wood pallets, metal flashing (and lots of it), discarded road signs and $1 trouble lights. Rigid styrofoam SM insulation is an interior finish. A converted greenhouse and an old garden shed have been given second life as ice huts.
Given their often slapped-together construction, their random assemblage of otherwise discarded materials into ad hoc shelter, does considering ice huts as architecture give them too much credit? Maybe the taxonomy isn’t important. It isn’t to the ice fishers – it’s all about the fishing – just ask any of the inhabitants. Try to talk architecture or even building, and the conversation inevitably ends up in a discussion about lures, ice augers and more importantly, the weather.

Maybe it isn’t about the fish or the architecture. The most compelling aspect of experiencing these ice huts is the visual transformation of water into ice – to see the massive frozen expanse that begins underfoot and disappears into the horizon. The formation of this newly constructed icescape, brought on by the change in weather, is what is most fascinating.
We talk about buildings being connected to site, integrated with their surroundings, symbiotic with the landscape. An ice hut integrates directly with the snow-covered ice surface of the lake, literally freezing to the ‘site,’ as currents and wind shift the ice. There is something strangely indigenous about these huts. They have become something familiar — an icon, a symbol, a retreat, a weather vane, a black dot in an otherwise uninterrupted landscape.

The heroic effort of constructing a small hut, transporting it out onto the ice by snowmobile, maintaining it and securing it from being blown away during a sustained wind storm lies in the larger idea of weather-causing architecture: an ephemeral building, upon a temporary landscape, within a unique season. The ice hut grows out of the collective phenomena of weather and architecture where these two entities meet in a typology of low-tech habitation full of simplicity and honesty.

The idea of transformation, mobility, temporality and resourcefulness, combined with weather, over time, equals one ice-fishing season on Lake Nipissing. Land artist Andy Goldsworthy has said that ‘a landscape doesn’t have to involve land – time is a landscape’.

Why does an ice-covered lake in Northern Ontario accommodate some of the most honest, dynamic, and vulnerable architecture to have evolved directly out of the weather? It is both out of necessity and functionality, but also is underpinned by the seasonal climate change that reclaims of a body of water and establishes static boundaries usually unassociated with such undefined and expansive territory.

The ice huts demonstrate and reveal value as objects, as shelter, as a means to survive and simply as a way to connect with uncommon ‘ground’. The weather, the economy and current architecture trends all have something in common, but the ice hut has a life of its own. It is sustainable by default. It has the potential to weather the climate and recession with resilience.

Sopinka, Steve. 'Weather-causing Architecture' On Site review, no. 21 Spring 2009
©Steve Sopinka and On Site review

The cul-de-sac

private streets, public spacesHavva Alkan Bala and Hassina Nafa
The curving, narrow streets which give you the feeling of an old town may sometimes lead to somewhere or may not. A dead end road is not a cul-de-sac, neither is it a dead-and-street. It certainly isn’t the second one. It is obvious that a culture like this has not experienced such a dead end road. A young child who sits looking out of a window on to a dead end road will never get bored. This is the sitting room of the neighbourhood. Even though it may seem like the houses in the street are leaning against each other, once you walk through the garden gates you can feel the independence. Some are gardens, some are just backyards. Whichever type it is, it is just a sitting room with four tall walls around it but doesn’t have a ceiling. —Balamir 1994

cities are composed of buildings, open spaces between buildings and the streets that connect them. These elements are arranged in a way that reflects their culture. Cul-de-sacs in traditional Anatolian cities represent Ottoman as well as Islamic city culture. Although mediaeval European cities have similar dead-end streets, the usage and the approach to cul-de-sac phenomenon have been completely different. In the traditional urban texture of Anatolian cities the cul-de-sac is a semi-public street safe for children and a semi-private social space for adults: it is well known that crime is less predominant in such urban layouts: cul-de-sac in the Islamic/Ottoman context is to do with segregation, privacy through space, hierarchy and control.
In modern cities, cul-de-sacs are not much appreciated in streets designed for motor vehicles. Although the cul-de-sac has a function as a transitional space between public and private space, they are disappearing in modern cities.

concept
Cul-de-sac is defined in architecture and urban design literature as ‘the street pattern open only in one side and connected to other larger streets’. (Keles 1999), (Sözen ve Tanyeli 1992) (Figure 1).
In Western logic cul-de-sac triggers something not positive: dead-end street, blind alley, blind path are used alongside cul-de-sac, namely dead, numb, dead, lazy, sluggish, lethargic, shiftless, indolent ways (Keles 1999). Cul-de-sac is either a semi-private or semi-public road for residential groupings with only one-way access.

logique
Traditional Anatolian cities were organic, free, rhythmic, not geometric (Aru 1998). The pattern of traditional residential areas was 1-3 floors, having a courtyard belonging to house and a cul-de-sac, curved, narrow and full of bends (Aktüre 1978). The cul-de-sac pattern gives to users a sense of belonging, a territory where they feel safe and protected. The public, semi-public, semi-private and the private overlap (Stewing 1966) (Figure 2).

The growth of these cities occurred in two ways (Figure 3). The first way was the filling the gaps (graveyards and un-constructed areas) in the city pattern. The second way appeared as an expansion of urban settlement areas out at the edges (Raymond 1995).
Under Ottoman rule, people and animals that carry loads used the Anatolian city (Schwarz 1959) — cabriolets were either limited or used on the main road (Yerasimos 1996), hence the roads are generally narrow and change direction frequently (Schwarz 1959). Narrow and broad streets follow each haphazardly, their dead ends have short or long branches and widely varying widths.
Dead ends, divided from each other by gates according to their value and ethnicity, are a civic transportation system organised through closed districts. Ethnic or denominational differences hold the potential for social conflict. Such mixed districts are divided from each other by doors and walls that construct a cul-de-sac (Lapidus 1967), (Stewing 1966) (Figure 4). As well, neighbourhood and family relations affect urban patterns, particularly when a son gets married an extension is added to the house of the family. These extensions make a cul-de-sac by attaching two separate houses (Figure 5) — not legal but it in line with constitution and traditions (Yerasimos 1996).
Dead ends seen in Mediaeval cities (Mumford 1989), (Morris 1979), (Moughtin 1992) do not share the same peculiarities with the cul-de-sac of Anatolian Ottoman and Islamic cities. According to Stewing (1996), Islam attaches more importance to private property rights than public property as long as such rights do not directly harm other people, and it is Islamic city culture that defined the spatial and physical structure of the cul-de-sac. Islamic cities are not spaces one can bypass from one point to another, one quarter to another as one wishes. There is a soft, gradual and hierarchic transition from the most public spaces such as the mosque or bazaar, the square or large street through the garden gate to the most private spaces of garden and house. Oleg Graber defines Islamic cities as ‘human-faced’ where cold laws disguise humanistic warmth in streets (Armagan 1996). Although urban and rural areas are unplanned and uncontrolled due to absolute individualistic interests at the forefront in housing, and positioning according to parcel of land (Cerası 1999), this too is a reflection of Islam. Stefan Yerasimos (1996) in this context clarifies this warmth in a legal dimension.
The status of dead end is a wonderful example in terms of the priority of the rights of natural person. The partnership of property in dead end is not monotype; every resident is the partner of the property, which starts from the entrance of dead end and ends in the threshold of his house. Therefore he cannot enlarge his threshold towards the dead end without the approval of the other owners of the property. The area of the dead end, which is getting more private towards the inner area, becomes the private property of the owner located at the end. Social status of the street residents follows a decreasing order towards the open end (Yerasimos 1996).
In Islamic cities private property is more important than public property and the border concept is shaped through this understanding. The concept of boundary separating private and public property in Islamic cities is called fina, and is used in place of border, which means the progressive transfer from one unit to another. The phenomenon of cul-de-sac, turns the public area into private area in accordance with the fina enabling the transfer from one property to another in Islamic law (Yerasimos 1996). It is a kind of privatisation process of public usage based on the agreement of property owners of buildings that have a surface facing towards the cul-de-sac. (Stewing 1966, Yerasimos 1996). The owner of private property can occupy the street in front of his private property; moreover he can have the right to use this area permanently. Therefore, this street becomes his fina. Two neighbours facing one another may break off the road and divide it into two dead ends with the permission of the street residents. These two dead ends become the property of the residents. Thus, people in this area could privatise a public area.
Administrative, legal and economic alterations were observed in Anatolian countries under the rule of Ottomans after the 1839 proclamation of ‘Tanzimat’ which was a series of Western-influenced regulations (Denel, 1982). These alterations comprise the transforming of the traditional Ottoman city pattern into a grid by deteriorating traditional city patterns. The social logic which creates cul-de-sac has become ‘the other’, starting from the Tanzimat period. When new spatial hierarchies were taken into consideration, the modern city lost the cul-de-sacs as interface.

mots dernieres
Modern movements in architecture and city planning have contributed to the neglect of the street and its architecture. Le Corbusier was one of the main offenders claiming that streets no longer worked and we have to create something that will replace them. One of the significant problems of today’s cities is the sharp-edged transition between private and public space. The cul-de-sac has offered a traditional solution to this sharp-edged transitional problem, with particular buildings between public and private spaces, which provide soft, gradual and hierarchic transition.

Bala, Havva Alkan and Hassina Nafa. 'Turkey: the cul-de-sac. Private Streets, Public Spaces' On Site review, no. 19 Spring/Summer 2008
©Havva Alkan Bala, Hassina Nafa and On Site review

Porta Portese

the evolution of a Roman street marketDanielle Wiley
Each Sunday morning, the Porta Portese market overwhelms the Portuense neighbourhood of Rome, spreading through streets, sidewalks and squares. Although its architecture consists of lightweight bancarelle, the market is one of Rome’s densest spaces. There are 1000 official vendors, but the Comune di Roma estimates the actual number to exceed 30 000. While the surrounding neighbourhood gives shape to the market, the market reciprocates by actively shaping its milieu. Over the past six decades, bus and tram lines have been deflected, segments of streets have been widened into piazzas, and the municipality’s ambitions to redevelop the neighbourhood have been stymied. The city and market are mutually constitutive, on a very tangible physical level as well as on a cultural one.
Porta Portese is Rome’s largest Sunday-morning market and also one of its youngest. When in 1943 the main avenues into Rome were bombed and blockaded, a spontaneous group of black market carrieri materialised, running private cars with contraband food and goods into the city. By 1965 the demography of vendors at the market had shifted. The new majority were Neopolitans who would spend six days trolling the Campagna region for wares, sifting through local beaches and farmhouses abandoned during the war. They would then arrive in Rome at midnight on Saturday to secure the best spots along Viale Portuense. Today, most clothing stalls along Viale Portuense are managed by recent immigrants from North Africa and India. Along Via Ippolito Nievo, established vendors of predominantly eastern European origin sell furniture, while contraband peddlers compete for space on the sidewalk, laying out CDs on sheets of cardboard. A recent wave of Chinese vendors selling home electronics and digital novelties reflects Italy’s new political relations with China. The shifting demographics, activities, wares and territorial boundaries in the Porta Portese market describe a facet of the city’s evolving identity.
The Porta Portese market is a loose space – relatively self-organising and highly adaptive. The market might serve as a vernacular precedent for the kind of event space that is de rigeur in contemporary architectural theory and practice. More deft than a formal piazza, the market responds to changes in the city’s cultural, political and economic conditions. This responsiveness may stem from the market’s paradoxical status as a marginal space within the city’s centre. The market negotiates many boundaries: the ancient Aurelian wall and its seventeenth century portal, an industrial riverbank of the Tevere, an edge of the mediaeval city and tracts of modernist post-WWII palazzi. Many contemporary urban scholars, including the Rome-based Osservatorio Nomade, argue that the peripheral zones of historic European cities have the greatest capacity to generate new urban forms, experiences and identities. The Porta Portese Market, although embedded in the city centre, has the qualities of an urban edge. The market’s generative capacity becomes apparent through its weekly transformations. Each Sunday morning produces a new iteration as the stall keepers negotiate their territory and adjust their wares according to season and fashion.
The idea of a street, square or market as an archetypal public space becomes contentious in view of transnational and cross-cultural dynamics in places like the Porta Portese market. Even the most basic precepts of public space come into question: what it is, where it is, who is it for, what it should do. Since the late 1990s, the diaspora of people between and within Italy, the EU, Africa and Asia have caused rapid shifts in the make-up of local districts in Rome, particularly in Esquilino and Portuense. This intense movement of peoples, at a global and a city scale, is paralleled by transnational flows of commodities, information, images and ideas — in Rome, which once maintained a mono-cultural image in the face of all contrary evidence, nowhere is this transnational mobility as evident as in Porta Portese market.
Those who participate in street life now carry with them a much greater diversity of historical models and different, possibly conflicting, symbolic expectations of public space. Some fear that the public sphere might become too fragmented to sustain a dynamic yet cohesive street life. Over and above the pressures of absorbing so many multiple interests into urban public space are the challenges that an expanding digital public realm presents to the street as a primary scene of encounter. The permeation of the city by communications technologies – which, in fact, make this mobility between the global and local possible - transforms our sense of place. Contemporary urban theorists suggest that the new role of public space is to reassert a sense of place by expressing local identities in relation to a globalised public domain. What does this prescription for public space mean for architects, who take the front line in making public spaces?
Vernacular precedents are valuable models for architects to study how these broad concerns play out in ways that are in fact very material and case-specific. The Porta Portese market, for example, demonstrates how layers of permanent and temporary structures, everyday practices, regulatory policies, and changing economic and cultural conditions can create a vibrant and resilient public space – one that is, in the end, very particular to Rome. Porta Portese also raises questions for how such sites are observed, mapped and, finally, interpreted in an architectural design. Architects might consider what investigative and representational strategies would be appropriate to a public space that, like the Porta Portese market, is best understood as an encounter between a place and its inhabitations – one that is extended through time and embedded in a specific cultural milieu.

Wiley, Danielle. 'Porta Portese:the evolution of a Roman street market' On Site review, no. 19 Spring/Summer 2008
©Danielle Wiley and On Site review

An Impermanent Vernacular

innovation without architectsZahra Ebrahim
Some of the world’s greatest and most innovative architecture occurs on the streets of global cities on a daily basis, without the assistance of architects. Fly over Mumbai during monsoon season and you will see the rains bring a flood of blue tarpaulin: temporary shelters for the homeless seeping towards central skyscrapers. Take an elevated walkway over the streets of Hong Kong early in the morning, and watch the calm of shuttered storefronts give way to the people, the bustle and the newly erected awnings, stands and sidewalk-stalls. Drive through the Lower East Side of Manhattan and look to the streets to see the innovation, the creativity and the resilience of the homeless population whom have constructed homes from wood platforms, crates and plastic that have the aesthetic of an eyesore but upon closer inspection, the essence of home. It is in these places, in our very neighbourhoods, on our very streets that architecture is affecting people yet it is often unrecognised for it is architecture without an architect.
Temporary architecture, ephemeral architecture, is one of the world’s oldest models of the built form. It is reflective, like vernacular architecture of the local area, the local needs and of local human interest. The ephemeral architecture of today provides shelter, safety and comfort while simultaneously evolving with local changes in climate, political conditions, gentrification and social change. It remains because of cultural tradition, displacement or transience – an architecture of the dispossessed. This temporary architecture, created anonymously, does not occur in rural, invisible areas but rather in urban centres, most often in urban slums. It has moved over the past hundred year from the unplanned, unlegislated rural to the strictly zoned, planned urban. In 2003, the United Nations reported that one billion people – approximately one third of the world’s urban dwellers and a sixth of all humanity – live in slums. Architecture is occurring without architects in the same places where it is occurring with architects. This provides an interesting point of comparison at the success of these spaces as they are juxtaposed against each other. Although primitive, these shelters and this architecture, juxtaposed in the urban environment is acting with the same intention as much of the post-modern canon. Temporary architecture is actively responding to the form, function and environment on a daily basis.
Visit Mumbai, India, in the months of July to September, and experience the ultimate act of architect-free architecture. Mumbai is home to one of the world’s poorest urban populations as well as housing one of the world’s largest urban slums. In an effort to manage the spread of these slums, they are periodically razed by the government, leaving the dwellers forced to reinvent and reconstruct their homes, adapting them to current climate and political conditions. From July to September, monsoon season dictates the aesthetic of the architecture and the box and board constructed shanty towns are covered in a blue mass of tarpaulins, literally highlighting the polar class divisions in the city.
Both in Mumbai and Hong Kong, cultures have long been defined by a history of displacement. Colonialism in both countries affected the movement of indigenous populations, forcing them to constantly adapt to new surroundings. In Hong Kong the urban fabric has long been defined by informal and impermanent architecture. It is not only on the corners of the urban areas where this occurs, but on the main streets, where a big-box retail location is neighboured by a storefront selling fresh grilled squid and various forms of dried sea creatures – this storefront is obsolete by nightfall. Similarly, rounding a corner into a street market, by day a thriving and bustling metropolis of colour, smells and sounds; by night almost unrecognisable except for the odd abandoned piece of fruit or cardboard bearing the price of the day’s catch. Night markets (specifically in Asian regions) also bear this character. By day, abandoned, often dilapidated alleyways; by night, thriving, loud, exciting urban spaces that leave little to be desired.
In North America, due to highly regulated zoning rules, the most common form of architect-free architecture is the architecture of the dispossessed, the architecture of the homeless population. Whether in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver or the Lower East Side of Manhattan, these forms often are a combination of boxes, crates, parts of old machinery found on the street, and various remnants discarded by urban dwellers that are creatively integrated and purposefully used in housing for this demographic. In 1993, New York Times writer Patricia Leigh Brown interviewed Pepe Otero, a Manhattan homeless man who had constructed a makeshift structure out of discarded objects in an effort to carve out the closest thing to a home that he could manifest on the streets of Manhattan. Instead of being ashamed of his current living situation, he seemed proud, almost boastful about it. ‘You know something? It took character to build that. A lot of feeling went into it. Building it shaped my attitude. You realize you can do things for yourself. People who build for themselves have an interest in themselves. As long as you don’t forget, you’re not forgotten’.
What is most paradoxical about urban ephemeral shelters is that they are often looked upon as primitive by the majority of the urban population. As necessity is the mother of invention, and innovation is essentially born out of need, it is these impermanent spaces that make use of materials indigenous to urban centres, consistently adaptable to all conditions, and often amongst the most sustainable as they can be constructed and demolished with little or no damage to the environment (40% of emissions are caused by building construction and demolition) and are constructed from re-used – and therefore sustainable – materials. Bernard Rudofsky wrote (in 1964) that it is simple, even primitive dwelling types that we escape to when we need any form of relaxation (to get away from our technological mania), and it is in primitive surroundings that our chances of finding relaxation hinge upon. These anonymous builders around the world are providing an untapped source of architectural innovation.

So how does one recognise architect-free architecture? By its very nature it is defined by unpredictable streetscapes, streetscapes whose aesthetic changes on a daily basis. It is a return to vernacular that addresses local necessity by using local resources – an evolving architecture that speaks to its ephemeral contexts. Temporary shelter comes as a result of years of experimentation rather than years of architectural education. This vernacular, an impermanent vernacular, is creating not only creating architect-free architecture on the street level, but an architecture of empowerment that forces the boundaries of innovation.

Ebrahim, Zahra. 'An Impermanent Vernacular: innovation without architects' On Site review, no. 19 Spring/Summer 2008
©Zahra Ebrahim and On Site review

Yuquot, British Columbia

syncretic signsThe two house posts within the former sanctuary, with the communion rail separating the nave from the sanctuary. On the left near the door is the altar and tabernacle, moved from their former central position. Inward-facing seats (the pews) are typical of potlatch houses of the 1920s.

Michael Leeb
Yuquot is a village on the southernmost part of Nootka Island, British Columbia. Its church sits on a windswept hill on a narrow ribbon of land between the open Pacific Ocean to the west and Friendly Cove to the east. There is a grove of trees to the south and a footpath through chest-high blackberry vines flickering with hummingbirds.

The church is neo-Gothic with arched windows along the length of the building, a central tower and a spire which also served as a bell tower. In a niche of this central tower stands a statue of the Sacred Heart. The church is clad in whitewashed wooden planks with concrete buttresses supporting the frame. The present building, built in 1956, replaced the original church, designed and built by Fr. Brabant in 1889, destroyed by fire in 1954. The 1956 building appears to have been built on the foundation of the original church. In 1995 the building was redefined and is now used as a cultural centre and museum for the Mowachaht-Muchalaht First Nation. This is only apparent inside, since all exterior qualities of this building only convey the sense of a neo-Gothic wood church.

When you go in, the first thing you see is a display of site maps and architectural renderings for a proposed Na’amis Interpretive Centre (in the works since 2000) for the village of Yuquot given that it has been named a National Historic Site. The entry also has a stained glass depiction of Yuquot, donated by the Spanish government in 1957. From the front door one can see the old nave of the church but the culturally redefined interior is only apparent once fully inside.
In 1995 two totem house posts were placed at the doorway between the entry and nave, and two other posts stand within the former sanctuary at the opposite end of the building. These house posts are carved replicas of former house posts dating from the 1920s when they were used as totem poles for potlatch houses. These totem poles are freestanding and not part of the structure. Nevertheless, this dramatic alteration of the interior has culturally redefined the original intent of the building and represents a cultural form of reclamation and cultural assertion.

Other modifications include the reorientation of the pews on either side of the nave so that the pews now face each other rather than towards an altar. Although a communion rail still separates the nave from the sanctuary, the altar and tabernacle are somewhat haphazardly placed to the left side of the former sanctuary from their original central placement, enhancing the significance and centrality of the two house posts within the former sanctuary.

Within the bell tower located in the former choir loft are a large crucifix and a number of statues arranged in a semi-circle. The sense is of a grotto with beautiful ambient light, and resembles very much the placement of carved human-like figures that once were found within the Whaler’s shrine that was removed from its location near the village of Yuquot to the American Museum of Natural History in 1905. The similarity in some respects of these two shrine-like spaces (the bell tower and the Whaler’s shrine) I would argue are not coincidental but rather the grotto-type space within the bell tower is indicative of a form of cultural reassertion and architectural syncretism within the former church. Both First Nation traditional indigenous art and architecture coexists with traditional Catholic iconography within this structure. Although the cultural centre now resembles a 1920s potlatch house, vestiges of the religious architecture of Catholicism still remain — the ambient lighting from the series of windows along the sides of the building are also typical of early potlatch houses.

The result is a unique and complex architectural syncretism between the cultural history of contact and the power of European religions in the dismantling of aboriginal culture, the aspirational efforts of the Mowachaht-Muchalaht people to repatriate their pre-contact, ancestral Whaler’s shrine to Yuquot, and the Canadian Government’s deferred recognition of Yuquot as a National Historic Site.

Leeb, Michael. 'Syncretic signs' On Site review, no. 18 Fall/Winter 2007/2008
© Michael Leeb and On Site review

Urban Settlement: Ermenek, Turkey

Selçuk Sayin and Esra Yaldiz
Selçuk Universitesi Muhendislik-Mimarlik Fakultesi
Mimarlik Bolumu Kampus, Konya, Turkey

Cities are places where the relations between yesterday and today are traced and where people identify themselves by different place-structures. A city’s own personality is directly affected by ideology and movements in specific periods, something particularly outstanding in traditional settlement units.
A society can be defined as a cultural vicinity or an architectural vicinity. Streets, areas and houses reflect processes that form the physical environment as an accumulation of technological, economic and social status, social preferences, movements and religious perspectives, plus personal interest and necessity despite restrictions imposed by nature. People interact with culture as required: it is a communication tool between human beings and the environment. This is how place is determined.
Anatolia has had numerous civilisations, each one leaving traces on its cities. Ermenek, where traditional fabric is not yet corrupted, is one of the most significant cities in the region surrounded by Antalya in the west, Isparta-Burdur and Konya in the north, Seyhan and Ceyhan Rivers in the east and the Mediterranean to the south. Ermenek is an ancient town on the Ermenek River and has been a hub for the area throughout history.
Urban settlement sits on south-facing lower mountain slopes with a Mediterranean climate. Main economic activities are agriculture (cereals, industrial farming, horticultural production and viticulture), stock breeding, small-scale industry, trade and mining. Crafts include textiles, shoemaking, tailoring, ironwork, woodwork, rugs and copper work.
Because Ermenek has been a significant historical centre, its traditional city fabric shows interesting surprises in the integration of city and the green valleys of the Taurus Mountains. Although physical characteristics play an important role in shaping overall city structure, how people live is different from community to community, according to culture and social structure. As a result, various traditional fabrics have typologies based on identical principles with completely different uses. For example, parallel streets laid out topologically on lower mountain slopes are linked by steep streets and steps. These share in the formation of traditional Ermenek house fabric which reflect an integration of geographical circumstances, family structure and overall characteristics in the society.

Ermenek houses, spilling over the hillside, generally have two floors with animals housed on the bottom. These houses resemble steps stretching over the hillside: the roof of one house is the yard for another house. In some parts of the city, houses hang from rock faces: house façades are made of wood and supported with angle braces driven into the rock.
Roads cut into the hillsides allow one to enter houses over the streets. On main streets, upper floors are lived in while the ground floor is left as a covered passage ensuring the vivacity of the street. Streets are narrow and often end with a house, making a blind street.
Building materials in Ermenek houses include stone for the basement and load-bearing walls; wood floors, walls, cupboards, agzı açık, doors, windows and building frames; soil in roof coats and stucco; mine for mallets, door grab bars, decorations on doors and windows, and lime on the cooker and walls.

Culture, as a concept, is a complete package composed of production and consumption relations followed by beliefs, values, norms, perception, uses and customs. It can be regarded as a type of infrastructure regulating social and individual behaviours. Belief systems, ethnic roots, regional factors and interaction with other communities assume an important role in formation of culture’s structure.
Traditional societies gradually form and sustain their ways of building in ways that go beyond features of the specific region in which they live. Communities stick to their own tradition of place even if they migrate to a different physical environment — in other words they bring to their new habitat the building production of their previous habitats. Traditions of ‘cultural place’ resist environmental changes because the act of creating a place is realised in accordance with a world view. Beliefs and contemporary technology, geographical conditions of the place and materials can be both derivative and climate-determined.
Families used to live together in Turkish culture. Children did not leave home after marriage: this newly-formed family was allocated a room in the house. The room given to the little family had a wardrobe bed and a bathroom in the wardrobe bed. A musandere, above the wardrobe beds, stored dried summer food for the winter.
The sofa, connecting inner and outer places in houses, is the focus of household living in the summer. Domestic production activities, imposed by Turkish agricultural economy, take place here. The ground floor is generally kept for storage and service — there is a cooker for baking bread on the ground floor and other units such as animal housing, kitchen, and other service facilities that housewives spend most of the day with. Ambars (storehouses) are built on the ground floor for keeping wheat.

Studies of culture and human-made environments claim that buildings constitute an inseparable part of the culture and are a product of it at the same time. House-form is a complex result of socio-cultural influences dependent on factors such as climate, defence systems and building and construction technologies. Ermenek houses are models of traditional architecture shaped by regional features, culture and geography. Although ensuring physical contingency means the preservation of living environments rather than physical forms, it is highly important to conserve these fabrics shaped with such local characteristics.

Sayin, Selçuk and Esra Yaldiz. 'Ermenek' On Site review, no. 18 Fall/Winter 2007/2008
© Selçuk Sayin and On Site review