How Arab States Used Architecture to Build Post-Colonial Identity

For many years, the history of architecture in the Arab region and the global South in general has been written through a West-centric lens, that is through colonial and post-colonial conditions and the relationship of architects and architectures in this region to the West. Now is the time to challenge that narrative.

In the late 1960s, especially after the Naksa and the defeat of many Arab countries in the Arab-Israeli War, there has been a revision of what arabism means. And here you can see that this defeat was reflected in looking at a specific meaning of what Arab architecture can be in this period. We are trying to pin down one identity of a very complicated thing, as Arab architecture.

For the Arab region, we find that in the late 19th century, the early 20th century, we have a movement of revival. You start to hear many “neo”: Neo-Pharonic, Neo-Egyptian, Neo- Assyrian, it depends where you are. So this was a product of many architects, who are part of the colonial legacies, but also Arab architects who studied in the West, working somehow in parallel to produce these buildings.

After this, we start to look at a period where the Arab countries are starting to get their independence. That is mid-20th century. And we start to look at the transition from revival to renewal. That is understanding the essence of what architecture is and try to produce it for the Arab region, for the Arab world. And what happens here is it was also a movement of understanding the architects, not as a craftsperson, but also as an intellectual.

And we start to hear architects, doing architectural journals, like the Egyptian architect Sayed Karim who started a journal called the Amara, The Magazine of Architecture. One of the first articles in this journal by Sayed Karim, he poses the question: what is architecture? So in this kind of context, we’re looking at architects who are also looking for their own kind of trajectory as builders of nation, as contributors to this independence, but also essentially as architects in many projects in this region.

We find different kinds of interpretation of modernism, kind of adopt the values of modernist architecture as was established in Europe or in the West, looking at key figures like Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and producing buildings at large scale.

But we start also to see figures who are starting to make a different interpretation of modernity. And they take it more to local conditions and they contextualize this modernity. Modern architecture and the history of modern architecture is usually read through key architects, key figures, key buildings. But what it misses is the production of builders, not necessarily architects, the one that we call vernacular architecture.

For example, Mohamed Makiya, an Iraqi architect who starts to adopt modern architecture to kind of take inspiration from historical and traditional Iraqi architecture. Figures like Hassan Fathy, the Egyptian renowned architect. He’s a modernist architect who contextualized this modernity to the local values. So, as you can see in this period, there is this range of visions of a nation translated through built environment, through buildings, through projects of mass housing, through projects of hospitals, universities, but also, monuments. Arab architects were active actors, and they crafted their buildings around their project of independence.

The late 1960s, and especially after the defeat of Arab countries in the Arab-Israeli War, which we call Al Naksa, the idea of nation and the idea of arabism, were both under revision again, because that kind of created a rupture between an Arab world that was aspiring towards prosperity, development, construction and architecture, to a state of defeat basically. A very important idea started to appear on the surface of the discussion, which has to do with tradition or heritage.

We call it in Arabic “turath”. And the discussion of what is turath against modernity, tradition against modernity. Here we have a division that we start to see between architects who theorize and architects who build. So in this turath or tradition phase, we start to see cities grow informally. We start to see architects retreat. And that became the state of Arab architecture in the 80s, 90s and until early 2000s.

However, there are, some very promising directions that we see in Arab architecture today, represented by many architects who experiment with local materials with local climatic conditions. For example, environmental conditions, geological conditions, economic conditions is a key to reengage this cultural product with its society and establish an Arab discourse about what architecture in the Arab world means.

There’s rarely a year that passed without a conference about architecture and identity, looking for identity, searching for identity. So in a way, I think that we start to not care about building architecture, but we’re caring more about finding what the identity of this architecture without thinking that finding the identity of architecture is by practicing architecture.