One of the things that most surprised me about Morocco was the huge empty spaces. For instance at Fes, the Mechouar (parade ground) in front of the walls, between Fes-el-Bali (old Fes) and Fel-el-Jdid (new Fes); or the Djemaa el Fna, in Marrakech; or the huge expanses of the Place el Hedim, the square containing the Qubba, and the massive area in front of Dar el-Kabir at Meknes.
Moulay Ismail's work at Meknes is said to have been inspired by what he had heard about Versailles, and it's often compared to Versailles. But in fact the comparison is instructive mainly because although Moulay Ismail achieved bigness, he did not achieve greatness. There appears to be be no significance to the walls and spaces he laid out; they do not create axes, do not relate to each other, do not create an organisation of space.
Place el Hedim (admittedly changed since his time) for instance appears to be a huge, regular rectangle laid out in front of the great Bab el-Mansour. But if you look carefully, Bab-el-Mansour is off-centre - it has no relation to the space.
Nor is there any attempt to regularise or articulate the space. The big square in front of the Dar el-Kabir is not given any organisation by the buildings that face on to it - there are no regular arcades, no features that could make it a focused space rather than just an empty area.
The huge long corridor that runs from past the Zaouia in Meknes is nearly a kilometer long (my reckoning, based on pacing it) - yet it runs from one little gate in the wall to a blind corner. It is not an axis; it doesn't go anywhere. In Versailles, an alley like this would be an avenue, leading to a viewpoint, to a focal monument; here, it's just a long dog-leg with nothing at the end.
This is characteristic of the Moroccan city - though I'd hesitate to say it is a characteristic of Arab cityscapes as a whole. Only in the work of Moroccan architects post-colonisation, borrowing from the repertoire of the French-designed villes nouvelles, do you find regular spaces, articulated by the architecture that surrounds them.
The big squares are empty spaces. They come alive, as the name of Djemaa el Fna ('assembly of the dead') suggests, only when people assemble in them. No people, no meaning. No people, no articulation. No people, no need. It's the people who define the space, and not the other way around.
Showing posts with label cityscape. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cityscape. Show all posts
Sunday, 5 April 2009
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Glimpses of Morocco
Just back from three weeks in Morocco - and it was a fascinating visit, not least in glimpses of a different cityscape.
The European city is a city of open spaces, that don't change their character, that relate to each other logically. Since the Renaissance, there's been a rationality to the way cities are put together.
That logic doesn't happen in Arab cities. Seville, for instance, is the one city I always get lost in, even with the best map I can get.
Arab cities seem to be built around private spaces. The streets are simply the gaps between the buildings. They don't run straight - they run via crooked corners; one street near Dar Si Said, in Marrakech, goes round five right angle bends in less than a hundred yards. Where the map shows them running straight across a grid, in fact you'll find a staggered junction, with a little kink in the street.
The idea of following the 'main street' becomes ludicrous. A main street can simply filter away into tiny passageways leading to the dead ends of a kasbah. It's only wider because it leads from the individual houses to the souk - but it does not go from A to B, so to speak; it simply feeds a drainage system, so that the flood of people going down the street turns into a number of trickles feeding into impasses that contain two or three house doors, and that's all.
And you see the buildings, the real heart of the city, only in glimpses and glances. For instance in Fes, as a non -Muslim, you'll only see the Kairouine mosque or the central Zaouia through gateways, obliquely. You can walk round them and trace their pattern, but you cannot enter; and they are intended to remain private spaces, unlike the western Cathedral with its open parvis, its facade, its spires and towers, or the baroque church which announces itself with a facade that is a piece of public drama.
It's this that marks the mysterious appeal of Moroccan cities. Morocco takes this strand of Arab architecture to its extreme - far more so, say, than Oman. Everything is secrecy and indirection.
The European city is a city of open spaces, that don't change their character, that relate to each other logically. Since the Renaissance, there's been a rationality to the way cities are put together.
That logic doesn't happen in Arab cities. Seville, for instance, is the one city I always get lost in, even with the best map I can get.
Arab cities seem to be built around private spaces. The streets are simply the gaps between the buildings. They don't run straight - they run via crooked corners; one street near Dar Si Said, in Marrakech, goes round five right angle bends in less than a hundred yards. Where the map shows them running straight across a grid, in fact you'll find a staggered junction, with a little kink in the street.
The idea of following the 'main street' becomes ludicrous. A main street can simply filter away into tiny passageways leading to the dead ends of a kasbah. It's only wider because it leads from the individual houses to the souk - but it does not go from A to B, so to speak; it simply feeds a drainage system, so that the flood of people going down the street turns into a number of trickles feeding into impasses that contain two or three house doors, and that's all.
And you see the buildings, the real heart of the city, only in glimpses and glances. For instance in Fes, as a non -Muslim, you'll only see the Kairouine mosque or the central Zaouia through gateways, obliquely. You can walk round them and trace their pattern, but you cannot enter; and they are intended to remain private spaces, unlike the western Cathedral with its open parvis, its facade, its spires and towers, or the baroque church which announces itself with a facade that is a piece of public drama.
It's this that marks the mysterious appeal of Moroccan cities. Morocco takes this strand of Arab architecture to its extreme - far more so, say, than Oman. Everything is secrecy and indirection.
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