Architectural Design Archive
Aleppo : a new beginning
The project is born from the necessity to rediscover the identity of the city and from the need to reconstruct the places where the people can meet for giving back life to that collectivity that from centuries regulates the daily life in the Arabic cities.Suddenly the city of Aleppo and the life of his citizens changes, changes the ways and the places in which them spend their days. the project wants to satisfy these two problems trying to lace to the tradition and stitching the hole produced by the war. Two plazas give life to the project, two plazas of different value and nature that allow to the collectivity to take back form. A plaza from the public value, one from the monumental value, this distinction is marked from a difference of quota, the monumental plaza leans on a platform and results to be raised in relation to that public, among the two plazas there is only a visual connection, the accesses are separate and the element that connects them is a street that embraces the two plazas around which develops the market. More than the market the project entertains a further function, a place that has always belonged to the Arabic culture, an Hammam. The Hammam is a thermal complex born in origin with the only sacred function,only then has also acquired a public function and both the functions are present in the project. The Hammam is developing inside the platform, above which it leans the monumental plaza; the public part and the sacred part are completely autonomous, they have two separate entries and there are not connection between them.In the sacred part there is a room for the wudu (smaller washing) and one for the ghusl (great washing); this because for the Islamic cult, before beginning the rite of prayer ,the washing is necessary to purify the body, the wudu only foresees the washing of some parts of the body, while the ghusl happens with the total immersion of the body in water; besides the two rooms for the washing is present also a place to pray characterized by a double volume whose superior part emerges from the platform and breaks the regularity of the plaza monumnetale becoming the protagonist. Some jealousies pierce the walls of this cube allowing the light to enter to the Inside of this sacred place. In the public part there are different typologies of tubs and a room for the care of the body.