“The casbah of Algiers has everything: all the elements of an architecture that shows immeasurable sensitivity to human needs and desires.” With this statement, the French architect Le Corbusier expressed his great admiration for the architecture of the Orient. Following in his footsteps, many of today’s architects and designers have drawn inspiration from the Arab world.
“Living Under the Crescent Moon” is an international traveling exhibition that presents various kinds of Arab dwellings, both traditional and modern.
With an unprecedented, rich selection of objects, architectural models, large-scale photographs, full-size walk-in domestic settings, movie alcoves, information terminals and other media, the exhibition features a range of fascinating interiors and lifestyles ranging from nomadic tents in the Sahara and the Arabian Peninsula to rural housing such as the Moroccan casbah or Yemeni multi-storeyed dwellings to splendid urban courtyard houses in Marrakech, Cairo or Damascus.
The exhibition — produced by the Vitra Design Museum in Berlin and mounted in cooperation with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Geneva, the Fondation Arabe pour l’Image, Beirut and sponsored by the Berlin Cultural Fund — illustrates the importance of colors, patterns, symbols and ornaments in Arab domestic culture. It also but reveals striking modernity in the use of space and objects, and in the way it integrates influences from other cultures. It also illustrates that domestic life in Arab cultures is not only fascinating from an aesthetic standpoint but also offers a myriad of functional solutions for general problems of everyday life.
Numerous models and reconstructed room environments provide visitors with the physical opportunity to experience various building types while domestic objects such as ceramics, textiles, tools and architectural elements offer impressions of everyday customs. Among the objects on display are precious rugs, ceramics, glassware, doors, mushrabeyas and other household items.
To make the buildings’ interiors more pleasant, their decoration is entrusted to women. From plastering and whitewashing the walls, furnishing the niches, making storage vessels, water pitchers and ovens, spinning wool, weaving rugs and mats, embroidering wall tapestries, fashioning cushions, blankets and mattresses, to weaving baskets: all these tasks were done by female members of the family.
The exhibition and its accompanying catalog are divided into four chronological sections: the first deals with nomadic domestic culture. The ways of living adopted by sedentary rural populations make up the second section. Life in the traditional Arab city forms the third and the fourth and is devoted to the influence of western Modernism in the mid-19th century on the Arab world.
The rich heritage of Arab regional architecture often reveals an astonishing modernity whether one considers the reductive formal qualities, the multi-functional uses of rooms and objects, ways of regulating interior temperatures or in controlling the use of water. Architects such as Hassan Fathy, Elie Mouyal, Rifat Chadirji, Abdelwahed El-Wakil or Pierre Khoury — who have succeeded in establishing their visions far beyond the borders of their native countries — have utilized many of these solutions in their buildings, combining tradition successively with modern elements.
The exhibition “Living Under the Crescent Moon” also illustrates the negative aspects of radical modernization and transformation of Arab architecture, such as the decay of historic city centers, the population shift from rural to urban areas which gave rise to the emergence of uniformly drab concrete structures and satellite towns. Instead of documenting these products of modernity, the exhibition shows positive examples of how traditional and modern residential styles can mutually stimulate and complement each other. Perhaps the most convincing proof is how many wealthy families, while enjoying contemporary living quarters, nonetheless still maintain an adjacent living room with traditional surround-sofas.
Traditional architecture is adapted to the conditions of its geographic environment and becomes a part of its society.
For example, in the 1940s the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy discovered Nubian architecture and began to use the Nubian vault in his own designs. The use of such vaults reduces room temperatures by several degrees and allows greater air circulation. In order to assist in making houses cooler in many regions in the Arab world, wind-catchers were built on the roof. These caught the wind and directed it down to various rooms with the help of shafts and tubes which extended to the ground floor.
Another recurring theme in the exhibition is the house built around a central inner courtyard, thereby reducing exposure to the sun and also shielding private family life from the public eye.
Likewise, Stefano Bianca writes in the show’s book that the term mushrabeya — goes back to the custom of placing clay water jugs in window niches so that drinking water could be cooled by natural air currents. In sultry summer weather, he adds, the mushrabeya caught the cooling breeze and, at the same time, enabled the residents to watch every movement on the street without being seen.
The interior of the Arab house is a secure haven to which the family can retreat and it is protected in keeping with strict conventions. At the same time, it is a place for generous hospitality and the exhibition demonstrates that what can be learnt from the Orient is that hospitality is, and remains, the highest virtue in any household.
The exhibition “Living Under the Crescent Moon” is under the patronage of the German Foreign Ministry and was opened at the Vitra Design Museum in Berlin. After that it will be on view in the Museum of Modern Art in Valencia, Spain. A third stop is scheduled in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam.
Our own National Museum of Riyadh would be a perfect place for such an exhibition reminding us that, thanks to its rich heritage, Arab domestic and residential culture can modernize without losing its identity and its fascination.
Traditional and modern styles can successfully coexist and modernity should be a great deal more than the negation of tradition or identity.