| BUILDING TOWNS AND NEIGHBORHOODS:
LEARNING FROM TRADITIONAL MEDITERRANEAN URBANISM.
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| Top Left: A street in Aibar, a town 22 miles south-east of Pamplona in northern Spain. Photo by Bernard Rudofsky from Architecture Without Architects (1965). Top Center: City Place, West Palm Beach, FL. Photo by Charles C. Bohl, from Place Making (2002) Top Right: Haile Village Center, Gainesville, FL. Middle Right: Floridian Arcade. Photos by Charles C. Bohl, from Place Making (2002). The three color photos show ideas from ancient codes in use in recent developments. Bottom Left: Projections over streets: no information about the artist or the location is available for the sketch, however it is most likely a representation of a street in old Izmir, Turkey in the 19th century. Bottom Right: Main Street in Rosemary Beach, Florida, which was established in 1995. The town is located 8 miles east of Seaside between Panama City and Fort Walton Beach on Route 30A which runs along the coast from Destin to Panama City Beach. Photo taken on July 30, 2003, courtesy of Karen Moore.
| The goal of this web site is to provide information for understanding and learning from the history and theory of traditional urbanism of major cultures which have built cities, towns, and villages around the Mediterranean basin since antiquity to the early decades of the 20th century.
Collected Research, Essays, Projects, and Visual Information by Besim S. Hakim, FAICP, AIA (Consultant in Urban Design), Albuquerque, NM--Last updated 02/18/2003. Edited collaboratively for the web by Besim S. Hakim, Jeff Schommer, and Peter J. Musty.
Today the traditional human habitat around the Mediterranean basin exhibits sophisticated livable qualities as it is evident in the proximity of uses to each other, spatial and built form attributes which are admired by the large number of tourists from around the world and the United States who visit numerous Mediterranean towns to experience those qualities. We can recreate, without copying, those wonderful human scale, spatial, and built form attributes in our contemporary and future neighborhoods, towns, and cities if we are willing to understand, learn, and creatively apply the lessons. - Besim S. Hakim, 02/17/2003 |
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| |  | TMP Article:
Learning from Traditional Mediterranean Codes
| This essay is reprinted from the "Council Report III/IV," which contains a wealth of additional material on urban design, architectural style and codes. |
Date: April 2003
|  | TMP Article:
Byzantine and Islamic Codes from the Mediterranean
| “…you cannot have certain parties in the built environment having more privileges or rights than others. Everybody has to be treated equally. And the purpose of these codes is to ensure that this is maintained through time, through the process of change and growth…” -- Transcript of Besim S. Hakim’s presentation to Council IV, Santa Fe, NM |
|  | TMP Article:
Ancient Treatise Holds Lessons For New Urbanist Codes
| PAPER: Julian of Ascalon's Treatise of Construction and Design Rules from Sixth-Century Palestine |
Date: 2001
|  | TMP Article:
Teaching History by Searching for Emics and Etics
| This article describes a course in history and theory which the author developed and taught to architecture students. It was selected by the American Institute of Architects for the 1990 Education Honors Award. |
Date: 1991
|  | TMP Article:
Historic Old Town: Albuquerque, NM
| A Procedure for Guiding Change and Development Based on Patterns/Guidelines and Continuous Appraisal |
Date: 1983
|  | TMP Article:
Our New Architecture and the Many World Cultures
| By: Chris Alexander. A post to the TradArch listserv; The Great Style Debate. Courtesy of Jenny Quillien on behalf of Chris Alexander. |
Date: August 2002
|  | TMP Link:
John Habraken's Views on How to Intervene in the Field:
| John Habraken's views on how to intervene in the Field: defined as the unity of environmental form and its inhabitant agents: |
|  | TMP Article:
Why Write Codes?
| This essay was first posted May 12, 2003 on the PR0-URB@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU. Reproduced here by permission from Andres Duany. |
Date: May 2003
|  | TMP Images:
Slideshow of Images
| Follow this link to a slideshow of images demonstrating the issues discussed in the articles above. |
Date: August 2003
|  | TMP Article:
Besim Hakim's Work on Mediterranean Urbanism
| Links to Hakim’s work on traditional Mediterranean Urbanism |
|  | Practitioner:
Besim S. Hakim, FAICP, AIA
Consultant in Urban Design & Independent Scholar - Albuquerque, NM
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