Cultural Horizontality Auguste Perret in the Middle East

chapter 13 Cultural Horizontality Auguste Perret in the Middle East

Karla Cavarra Britton

What makes religious sites such an important becomes an especially revealing indicator of the touchstone for a study of contemporary urbanism social complexities of that era. In particular, the today? Why is the region of the Middle East in par work carried out by European architects in the cit ticular so revealing of the relationship between ies of the Middle East during the decades leading religious form and social, political, and cultural up to the Second World War provides especially evolution? Situated as it is between Europe, Asia, fertile ground for revealing the interlocking rela and Africa, the region of the Middle East—as the tionships and dialogues between colonies and pro birthplace of the three Abrahamic religions— tectorates. As Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait point remains the pivotal geography upon which the out in Urbanism: Imported or Exported?, in the past three interconnected variations of monotheism these interventions were often understood as “one- unfold, often with extreme and far-reaching con way impositions where the receivers are silent, sequences.1 As recent history demonstrates, the oppressed, impotent—if not outright invisible.”3 region continues to demand attention for the ways The approach of this essay, however, will be more in which public religious spaces (including mosques, closely aligned with recent studies that explore churches, and synagogues certainly, but also mon what Nasr and Volait describe as a more ambiguous uments and urban squares) remain crucial not reading of how natives were “full-fledged actors in only as traditional arenas for religious festivals the shaping of the built environment, with a vari and gatherings, but also as spaces for political and ety of roles to play and means to play them . . . social change as well as violence and civic dissent.2 Adaptation, hybridization, mimicry and appropria The now world-famous public Tahrir Square in Cairo tion are just some of the forms of diffusion and reminds us of how closely intertwined architec adoption that are relevant.” The result of this more ture and urban form can be with a particular nuanced reading is that typical distinctions such as society, molding its political and cultural confron foreign and indigenous become much harder to tations, and embodying its aspirations, contradic sustain, being no longer clearly evident. Such an tions, and uncertainties. analysis, for example, underlies Jean-Louis Cohen’s When the religious building type in the Middle description of “systems of hybridization” in The East, understood as an urban monument, is read Future of Architecture (2012), with the implication in relation to the complex currents of moderniza that the patterns of influence must be leveled into tion in the decades of the colonial period, it an interlocking horizontality between colonizer and colonized, rather than forced into a presumed verticality. In many ways, these patterns of cultural inter 1 Nasser Rabbat, “Architecture between Religion and Politics,” change may be most clearly seen after the Second keynote address at the symposium Middle Ground/Middle East: Religious Sites in Urban Contexts. Yale School of Archi tecture, January 21, 2011. 2 Nezar AlSayyad, “Cairo’s Roundabout Revolution,” New York 3 Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait, Urbanism: Imported or Times, April 12, 2001. Exported? (West Sussex: Wiley-Academy, 2003).

World War in large-scale projects such as Walter as a ‘pioneer’ of the Modern Movement in archi Gropius’ master plan for Baghdad University (1953), tecture, and as a key influence in the formation of or Josep Lluis Sert’s American Embassy in Baghdad Le Corbusier. Because of Perret’s lifelong commit (1955–61).4 It was before the war, however, when ment to finding an aesthetic for reinforced con the work of European modern architects such as crete construction, he has primarily been credited Le Corbusier and Auguste Perret was variously with having helped to give shape and form to this transformed in a dialogical interplay between the modern building technology. Yet Perret’s influen cultural and topographical realities of the Middle tial relationship with such figures as Le Corbusier East and modern building technology. Le Cor was not limited to the technological: his own form busier’s Obus Plan for the North African city of Algiers ative experiences abroad also helped to introduce (1931–32), for example, is but one well-known into Modernist experimentation a range of cul instance of this ‘horizontal,’ back-and-forth move tural influences that became a hallmark of its aes ment. In this case, the architect deployed concepts thetic character. Especially within the history of originating in his work for Rio de Janeiro, integrat modern religious architecture, Perret’s work had a ing it with a French colonial vision of moderniza strong archetypal influence in his rethinking of tion which combined his simultaneous attraction the appropriate form and material construction of to and suspicion of the Casbah. Other clear instances sacred buildings. It is for this reason that Perret’s of this horizontality of influence might include religious buildings—especially his Church of Notre the French colonial urban interventions of the Dame du Raincy (1922–23)—are often treated as early twentieth century in the cities of Casablanca, decisive in the evolution of the modern religious Cairo, Syria, and Beirut. Casablanca, in particular, building type (Figure 13.1). as the economic capital of France’s Moroccan What is less recognized (and what serves as a protectorate, was a city that famously incorpo central theme of this essay), is the degree to which rated an important model of modern architecture the composition and shape of Perret’s work was in as it was transformed by the work of exceptional fact unmistakably informed through his involve French urbanists Henri Prost and Michel Ecochard, ment in the design and construction of buildings as well as emerging architects such as Georges (a number of them religious) for cities in the Middle Candilis.5 East: Algiers, Casablanca and Oran, and later Alex This essay traces one such key instance of a andria, Cairo, and Ankara. Among the buildings dialogically ‘horizontal’ relationship in modern Perret produced for these cities, only a project architecture between Europe and the Middle East for the tomb of Atatürk is explicitly Muslim; all through the particular lens of certain religious works of the buildings, however, register and reflect the by a prototypical figure in this colonial interplay, influence of certain traditional Islamic forms, exhib the French architect Auguste Perret (1874–1954). iting what Ismail Serageldin has described in rela Perret’s contribution to the history and theory of tion to Cairo as a “cosmopolitan” welding together modern architecture is seminal. As the leading of religious cultures.6 As Perret sought to establish architect in France in the first half of the twentieth a vocabulary appropriate for the material of rein century, he has long been considered by historians forced concrete, he incorporated culturally spe cific elements derived from the traditions of French rationalism and Neo-Classicism, but also from his 4 See Gwendolyn Wright, “Global Ambition and Local Knowl edge,” in Sandy Isenstadt and Kishwar Rizvi, eds., Modernism and the Middle East (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 6 Ismail Serageldin, “Islamic Culture and Non-Muslim Contri 2008), 221. butions,” in Ismail Serageldin, ed., Space for Freedom: The 5 Jean-Louis Cohen, The Future of Architecture. Since 1889. Search for Architectural Excellence in Muslim Societies (London: (New York: Phaidon Press, 2012), 275. Butterworth Architecture, 1989), 226.