Casbah: a brief history of a design concept · Casbah: a brief history of a design concept Robert...

In the late ’50s a group of younger Dutch architectscollectively assumed the leadership of the Dutcharchitectural journal, Forum [1]. In a remarkableseries of 23 issues between 1959 and 1963, theyformulated a vision of collective form as the highestimperative of the architectural act. In defining aspatial medium for social content in architecture,the Forum group’s contribution was among themost seminal of its generation. Their critical abilitytransformed the intellectual content of urban designand social housing and helped to formulate andpromote a new cultural agenda for the profession.

The Forum editorial board included Apon, van Eyck,Bakema, Boon, Hardy and Hertzberger. Among these,Aldo van Eyck was the intellectual catalyst with a

vision of the magazine’s potential to influence theculture of practice. Beyond the limited membershipof the editorial board the group was stronglyassociated with the intellectual leadership of Team10 – whose work and writings frequently appeared inForum. Together they initiated a process of critiquewhich was to open the culture of Modernism to post-war thought and philosophy. In itsuncompromising commitment to the primacy ofsocial issues as the potential source of a newarchitecture and urbanism, the group wasunparalleled as a cultural force.

Besides its propagation of a humanist agenda forthe practice of architecture, Forum promoted certainmodels and methods of design. These were basedupon a preference for an architecture and urbanismof configurative patterns. The key term was, ofcourse, structure, and the search for the motifs andstructuring devices of an urban architecture was tobecome the seminal medium of their designapproach. For van Eyck, at least, these ideas wereinfluenced by his knowledge of the writings ofStructural Anthropology. As interpreted byarchitects this literature had diverse paths ofrelevance. The most direct was perhaps theanthropological field research model as a methodfor gathering knowledge. There is evidence of suchproto-architectural activities in both Forum and atTeam 10 meetings such as that at Otterloo in 1959(Newman 1961).

One of the general achievements of this generationwas its contribution to an emerging epistemologyfor design, a new openness to the past as a source ofknowledge, and the legitimization of precedent indesign. For the Forum group the access to precedentwas through the medium of configurative order.Underlying structure might be expressed as anabstracted two-dimensional pattern or three-dimensional spatial matrix. Preferredanthropological or historical sources were thosewhich provided examples of geometrically complexstructuring orders. This second influence ofStructuralist thought provided the idea ofunderlying structural orders. By analogy, the

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urbanismThe Casbah concept was developed by a group of youngerEuropean architects in the late 1950s. It flourished over a period of no more than ten years but its influence continues to this day.

Casbah: a brief history of a design conceptRobert Oxman, Hadas Shadar and Ehud Belferman

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1 Between 1959 and’63, in a series of 23issues of Forum,van Eyck and

others set out avision of collectiveform. Forum cover1963/1

concept of structure might then be appropriated indesign to spatial-organizational order.

There were other influences that helped them tomake these conceptual links to Structuralism.Foremost among these was the American architect,Louis Kahn. His preference for historical precedentswith a complex underlying compositional order wasknown and admired. His deductive design processfrom this underlying pattern to physical realization,or from abstract ‘form’ to realized ‘design’ providedthe key to a structure-based design method. Finally,his preference for simple geometry built intocomplex compositional orders by additive processeswas a breakthrough towards a new modern spatialconception beyond the open plan.

The first theoretical statementThe basic ideas of steps toward a configurative disciplineappeared in van Eyck’s pivotal paper of that title inForum No 3 of 1962. It was a strong theoreticalstatement of the instrumental value of thestructural and organizational knowledge that mightbe derived by research from the history of humansettlements, be they the primitive villages of theAmerican Southwest pueblo or the history andevolution of Hadrian’s Villa in Split. Knowledge ofconfigurative patterns and complex three-dimensional orders was to become essential domainknowledge as well as the source material of thedesign process.

The cultural potential of configurative orders wasthe pithy message of much of this research. Butbeyond the exclusively formal and instrumentalquality of this idealization of complex pattern therewas a deeper social agenda. Changeability and anevolutionary potential were regarded as intrinsic

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Robert Oxman, Hadas Shadar and Ehud Belferman Casbah: a brief history of a design concept

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2 The term Casbahsubsumed thespatial complexityrealized by additive,repetitive principlesof compositiona Forum end-paperillustration of the

Taos Pueblob Casbah as theimage of continuousbuilding andintegrated publicspace. Lithograph ofCairo by DavidRoberts, 1849

c Configurativepatterns towardsnew systems ofcollective form.Morgen (tomorrow),unsigned drawingfrom Forum 5

properties of a hierarchically ordered architecture.These attributes were not only to the advantage ofthe architect: they also empowered the user in theprocesses of housing and design.

Configurative discipline is about designknowledge and the significance of spatial-organizational structure in environmental designactivity. In this sense, configurative knowledge is one of the foundations of architectural design and the key to the design of human settlements.Complex spatial orders simultaneously reflect andsupport the social institutions of urban life just ascommunity may be seen to depend on density.

The Forum group’s vision of the city was one ofcontinuous urbanism. The house-city duality: thehouse as city and the city as house, was a dominanttheme and reflected the house-city relationship as anage-old characteristic of urbanism in theNetherlands. Indeed, one of the central objectives ofthe Forum group was to generate the structuralmeans for this relationship. The aim was to use theformal order of architecture in a community of forms as a proposition for forms of community.

The Forum group conceived architecture as the invention of three-dimensional models ofcollective form. Their interpretations of such modelsthrough precedents and complex geometricstructures anticipated the rich architecturalpotential that would later be realized by themselvesand other members of Team 10. There is today apoignancy about their invention both of a newtaxonomy of housing design and of a concept ofsocial architecture. It represents the last greatintellectual commitment to the centrality of socialorder in urban settlement design as the focus ofarchitectural discourse.

Besides the buildings that they managed tocreate in the image of their ideas, their legacy is anamazing body of concepts and methods of collectiveform. These ideas were to become an iconic sourcefor design as well as a new direction in designresearch.

The Casbah concept

Collective form and formal structuringConfigurative discipline was a means of achievingwhat van Eyck referred to as ‘labyrinthian clarity’.This latter concept essentially referred to the spatialcomplexity realized by employing additive, repetitiveprinciples of composition. Through this it wasdeemed possible to transcend the very limitations ofbuilding typology, to go beyond the slab block andother conventional urban building forms. Thespatial matrix replaced the concept of the buildingtype.

These ideas were subsumed in the term Casbah. Thefirst issue of the new Forum (No 7, 1959) contained anend-paper illustration with two photographs of theTaos Pueblo and the inscription, ‘Vers une casbahorganisée …’ [2a]. The image of the collective form ofthe pueblo was conflated with what was proposed asa generic term for formal structuring systems ofhabitat. Another image, that of the Middle-EasternCasbah with its associations of dense and compactspatial organization tempered by the waft of spicesfrom the shops that are spatially integrated with thehouses became the cultural ideal of a youngergeneration [2b]. The distance from the pristineabstraction of Dutch modernism could not havebeen greater. A low, dense, contiguous, multi-functional building form was seen as the preferredmedium for urban design. This concept drew on the


Casbah: a brief history of a design concept Robert Oxman, Hadas Shadar and Ehud Belferman

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3 The group structureprinciple underlyingthe repetitiveprocess was knownas clustera Clustering took theform of thesystematicrepetition of a set ofelements creating an

open butindividualized form.Stacked matchboxes,unsigned modelfrom Forum 8 b Collective form as acontinuous system.Stacked matchboxes,unsigned modelfrom Forum 4

principles of aggregation found in vernacularsettlements where the resulting rich formsconstituted identifiable social groups. In addition tothe visual intricacy of the formal compositions, thetight integration of built and open spacecharacterizing these settlements was considered apotential source of social enhancement.

This basis of design enabled the creation of urbanfabric through serial replication [2c]. It wassuggested that such morphological principles mightalso be valid at a range of scales, from the house tothe city. The concept of a textural fabric alsosuggested the possibility of a new kind of Modernistspace, that of modulated flowing space – ahybridization of the continuous flowing space of theopen plan and the structured space of historicalbuilding. Finally, Casbah was also seen as the path tonew forms of urban systems. These new formalsystems might also support spatial and functionalcontinuity, a realization of that elusive goal ofcontinuous urban environment that had evaded theModernists.

In 1962, van Eyck, outlining the design virtues ofCasbah, wrote:

‘... it is now possible to invent dwelling types, which do notlose their specific identity when multiplied, but, on thecontrary, actually acquire extended identity and varied



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4 By 1960 the idea ofsystems generatingcontinuous fabric(megastructures)had become adominant model andproduced canonicexamplesa A masterpiece ofthe elemental,

repetitive genre.Siedlung Halen,Berne by Atelier 5,1961b The hierarchicalapproachexemplified. TokyoBay scheme by KenzoTange, 1960

meaning once they are configured into a significantgroup … Each individual dwelling possesses the potentialto develop, by means of configurative multiplication, intoa group (sub-cluster) in which the identity of each dwellingis not only maintained but extended in a qualitativedimension …’

Clustering ‘Cluster’ was the group structure principleunderlying the repetitive process. Clusteringgenerally took the form of the systematic repetitionof a set of elements. Articulation of these elementsand relationships was the ‘… means to governmultiplicity creatively and to humanize number …’(van Eyck 1962 ) [3a]. These geometric systemsfrequently took the form of a double module, therepetition of which provided the requisite spatialdiversity as well as some degree of functionallooseness, or ambiguity. This latter was achievedthrough generosity of scale which tended to makethe modules functionally ambiguous.

The disillusionment with, and retreat from, theidea of the vertical city forced the younger group ofinternational architects to reformulate the relevantproblem of habitat for their generation. As the anti-typology of the vertical city, Casbah absorbed thelatter’s ambitions to re-conceptualize the models of

habitat. This ambition led to a dual approach forexperimental architecture. On the one hand, itengendered a sociological and research-orienteddisposition to design; and, on the other hand,innovative experimentation with the morphology ofdense urban fabric.

Collectively, the international architecturalculture of the early to mid-’60s redefined itsobjectives within the framework of this discourse(Buchanan 1990). Casbah and its connotations werepart of a new semantics in which the relationshipbetween the morphology of the village, theunderstanding of vernacular form, serialism,combinations of repetitive forms, and formalabstraction played itself out as an artistic andarchitectural paradigm. From the remarkable‘Primary Structures’ exhibition at the JewishMuseum in New York in 1962 (Crow 1996) to Safdie’shybridization of the vertical city and village in‘Habitat ‘67’, configurative discipline became theepicentre of a new set of generative concepts for thepractice of design.

MegastructuresThe related idea of systems generating a continuousand frequently linear urban fabric became adominant architectural model [3b] and such‘megastructures’ became the subject of intenseinvestigation. In Forum, we can see an easy slippage ofscale between smaller group designs and largerurban-scale systems, all considered as part of anenvironmental continuum of configurative orders.But the reconciliation between the repetitivestructure of Casbah and the urban scale ofMegastructures introduced certain important designquestions which preoccupied this generation ofarchitects. One of these was the distinction between apurely additive architecture of repetitive elementsversus hierarchically organized systems. The latterprinciple was to become of great significance in theefforts to overcome some of the limitations of apurely additive architecture.

By 1960 both approaches had produced canonicexamples. At least one masterpiece of the elemental,repetitive genre had been completed in the SiedlungHalen by the Swiss firm, Atelier 5 [4a]. In contrast, anearly project exemplifying the hierarchical approachwas Kenzo Tange’s Tokyo Bay Scheme of 1960 [4b], in



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5 Geometric patternsfound in van Eyck’santhropological andspatial studies bear aresemblance to hisown designsa Pueblo Arroyofrom Forum 3, 1962(pueblos issue)b Configurativevillage structure asan image of thecollective. TaosPueblo from Forum3, 1962

which the infrastructural elements of thecirculation system provide a highly organized orderinto which were plugged housing structures, etc (vanEyck 1962). The infrastructure provided a majorstructuring element and created a ‘dual’ order ofsupporting and supported. This infrastructuralorganization was one of the important principles ofmany other megastructure projects in which thehierarchical separation between ‘supporting’ and‘supported’ enabled diversity and change in thesupported, or lower level systems.

One may ask today whether the promise of suchprototypes was ever adequately explored before thefocus of architectural discourse moved on to otherinterests in the next decade. But for this earliergeneration working within the ’50s and ’60s, thepossibility of establishing formal systems on thebasis of socio-cultural knowledge gained throughresearch appeared to be a promising possibility. TheCasbah concept was representative of the widespreadacceptance of urban habitat as the core problem ofthe environmental design professions; and thedevelopment of high-density habitat systems as themajor intellectual challenge of the time. After theearly ’70s, this level of professional consensuslocating habitat at the epicentre of professionalculture ceased.

The legitimacy of precedents and the iconography ofpattern

Vernacular architectureOne of the most remarkable aspects of architecturalthinking in the late ’50s and early ’60s was thepromotion of pre-literate cultures, vernaculararchitecture and informal urbanism as legitimatesources of design knowledge. This tendency wasapparent in Forum with its frequent vernacular casestudies and reportage of specific in-situ research. Inthe Forum group’s initial issue (Forum 7, 1959),images of social collectivity and communityarrangements employing examples intermixed fromWestern and primitive cultures were juxtaposed. Thepueblos issue (Forum 3, 1962) was the outstandingexample of this phenomenon. However, numerousother examples exist of a broad trend towards thelegitimization of learning from precedents and theemergence of a contextual sensibility. This was partof the wiping away of Modernist strictures aboutlearning from the past.

An important influence on this development wasthe work of Le Corbusier and particularly thedirection that it took in the ’50s with the vernacularinfluences in Ronchamp. His early interest in these isapparent in the sketchbooks and such volumes asJourney To the East (1966) in which he treated theformal sources of the vernacular with the samedegree of respect as that reserved for the greatmonuments of architecture.

Bernard Rudofsky’s exhibition and catalogue forArchitecture Without Architects at the Museum ofModern Art in New York in 1964 was a milestone inthe acceptance of an already broad change ofsensibility. Rudofsky elegantly articulated both the

wisdom and the utility of the vernacular and,showing examples of Mediterranean villages, Italianhill-towns and the cliff dwellings of the Dogon ofSudan (also previously published in Forum), heextolled the unique attributes of vernaculararchitecture. Numerous examples of the interiorpatio as a medium of urban organization wereillustrated. Among the examples of North Africansettlements, Marrakesh was described as ‘… thearchetype of an Islamic town with its quadrangularhouses organized around interior courts’.

Structuralism and anthropological researchHere was a different motivation from theinstrumental quest for configurative pattern.However, Rudofsky was equally didactic in hisintroduction, emphasizing ‘… the idea that thephilosophy and know-how of the anonymousbuilders presents the largest untapped source ofarchitectural inspiration for industrial man’. Part ofthis new awareness of the value of the past camethrough, and was filtered by, a Structuralistsensibility. Otto Haan’s report on North Africanvernacular dwellings at the Team 10 meeting inOtterloo (Newman 1961) was one example of theattendant anthropological approach derived from acommitment to Structuralism. The growth of ananthropological approach to environmental studybecame a broad international phenomenon. Suchworks as those of Amos Rapoport (1969) on houseform and culture and Gunther Nitschke (1966) on thecultural sources of Japanese architecturerepresented the emergence of new researchapproaches during this period.

The interest in anthropological research asrelevant to architectural knowledge emphasized therelationship between culture and spatialorganization. The methodological filter whichenabled the utilization of such knowledge was themotivation to transform observed spatial patternsinto abstract syntactical relationships. It was neverconsidered a source for the acquisition of explicitprecedents, that is, actual forms that might beexploited in current designs. The two aspects, thelegitimization of vernacular precedent, as well as thesearch for a design method to abstract structuringprinciples, appeared equally important as ways ofdrawing on the past. However, despite the reluctanceto view anthropological case studies as directprecedents, the geometric patterns found in vanEyck’s studies of spatial organization of the villagesof the Dogon and the pueblos of the AmericanSouthwest bear a family resemblance to his owndesigns [5a]. This exploitation of geometrical gridsand modular, repetitive structures was later tobecome common enough in Dutch architecture to bedescribed as ‘Dutch Structuralism’ (Lüchinger 1981).

Learning from the vernacular, particularly fromstudies of configuration patterns in vernacularsettlements, generated a new interest in the historyand morphology of the village [5b]. In both researchand design, the village was to become an icon for thearchitectural profession throughout the ’60s.Projects such as Paul Rudolph’s Married Student



Housing (1960) [6a] and Eero Saarinen’s Morse andStiles dormitory (1962) [6b] both at Yale University,and Moore, Lyndon, Turnbull’s Sea Ranch (1964-66)[6c] exemplify the iconic power which the villagepossessed for that generation.

Village form and structure became considered asthe epitome of habitat design. In the best cases,design was not the eclectic re-use of vernacularimages. The objective was to enable the revival of theart of community living through the recreation,without formal imitation, of certain spatialattributes of the village. Safdie’s Habitat (1967) [7]may be seen as the culmination of this period inwhich the two dominant typologies of habitat – thevertical city and the village – were conflated. Thiscoalescence of slab and cluster forms was an attemptto inculcate many of the attributes of ground-basedcommunity structures within the high-rise building.It was a brilliant design statement of the merger ofthree of the paradigmatic design concepts of itsperiod: the vertical city, Casbah, and the concept ofthe factory-made house. It is not a coincidence thatstudies for this project in the form of Safdie’s studentthesis were originally published in Forum (5, 1962).

Low-dense housing and the open form

The manipulation of movement systemsDuring the ’50s, the design of circulation and spatialsystems in high-rise buildings was the subject ofintense investigation. A major medium for this workwas the manipulation of movement systems actingas ‘streets in the air’ connecting slab blocks.Womersley, Lynn and Smith’s aformal urbanstructure at Park Hill and Hyde Park, Sheffield (1955-1965) [8a] was an outstanding example of thistendency to apply social and urban ideology in thedesign of the organizational fabric of high-risebuildings.

Even in the ’50s, low-dense housing systems wereseen as an alternative medium for experimentationin both dense organization and collective systems.Some of this early work was inspired by the designsof Western architects in Near Eastern and Africancountries. The climatic design of many of theseprojects was influenced by regional prototypes(Squire 1957). British architects such as Chamberlin,Powell and Bon (Architecturlal Design, 1956) and thefirm of Fry, Drew, Drake and Lasdun (Drew 1957, andArchitectural Design 1958) developed a body of work inwhich they experimented with compactorganization in low-dense housing forms.Frequently, these schemes incorporated thestreet/path as a part of a continuous system, often inthe form of a covered street.

That circulation can be a generating designmedium within an architectural system was a lessonwell-learned. It was a principle frequently applied inNorth Africa where cutting-edge work was done by,among others, Candilis, Josic, Woods. Designs of theearly ’50s in Morocco and Iran explored the potentialof covered street systems spatially integrated withincontinuous clusters of low-rise housing. The well-known Semiramis Block by ATBAT in Algeria 1955,



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6 The village was tobecome an icon forarchitects in the1960sa Married studenthousing, Yale

University, NewHaven by PaulRudolph, 1960b Morse and StilesDormitory, YaleUniversity, New

Haven, plan by EeroSaarinen, 1962c Sea Ranch,California by Moore,Lyndon, Turnbull,1964-66

and later in Morocco [8b] early studies for whichbegan in 1953, introduced the checker-boardstacking motif which made possible the verticalcombination of traditional spatial forms such asshaded outdoor patio spaces. An intricateinterlocked system of continuous low-rise clusterswith an integrated path system of walkways coveredby parts of the building also appeared in their FortLamy project of the mid-’50s. Similar motifs alsoappeared in the work of the Swiss architect Studerfor Casablanca in 1954 [8c].

The emergence of low-dense housingIt is notable that in this work cultural responsivenesswas based upon spatial and configurative potentialrather than the desire for an iconic vernacular. Thuswork in the Third World might evolve principleswith relevance elsewhere. By the mid ’50s,experimentation with low-dense continuous systemswas widespread. Within the next few years theconfigurative richness of designs employingadditive, repetitive elements resulted in the low-dense system emerging as a significant designparadigm. The rationale of this housing was thatreasonable urban densities might be achieved withan organization of unique clusters and particularhouse forms. As the British architects, Howell, Killickand Partridge, said:

‘It seems to us that the house – i.e. the dwelling in directcontact with the ground – is a concept that CIAM hasnever taken sufficiently seriously as a possible element ofthe city. The lack of basic thinking by researchingarchitects in this field has meant that, while the multi-levelblock is now established as an urban concept, theTwentieth Century has not yet produced a city, or part of acity, made of houses; it has produced suburbs, dormitoryvillages and Broadacre, all latter-day children of theRomantic Movement, but not a Polis.’ (Quoted inLehrman, 1966)

The possibility of replicating the identity, privacyand territorial attributes of the ground-attachedhouse within dense clusters of low-rise dwellingsbecame one of the central concerns of the professionin the late ’50s and early ’60s. In terms of land-use,the savings achieved by the elimination of suchelements as side-yards made the dense housing

approach attractive. Furthermore, appropriateurban densities were seen by urban sociologists suchas Jane Jacobs in 1961 as among the requirements forurban safety and stability. Community formcommensurate with privacy was the rationalebehind Chermayeff and Alexander’s Community andPrivacy of 1963 (itself based on several years ofHarvard Graduate School of Design research on low-rise urban housing).

It was, however, the flexibility and variability ofarchitectural form that made low-dense clusters anappealing alternative. The promotion of the villageas a prototype for low-dense housing was alsoadvanced by the ingenious possibilities whichclustering offered for achieving the appearance ofdiversity and informality. The morphology of thevillage became a medium for the realization ofanother of the period’s most poignant andgenerative concepts, the open form. The term hadvarious interpretations. One of these was the varietyand diversity of form possible within a system. Openform in the case of low-dense housing can contributethe appearance of an ‘accidental’ quality of massing,or grouping, as it did at Sea Ranch. This potential ofexpression of the accidental within essentially rule-basedsystems was one of the most powerful aestheticconcepts of this period. In an urban sense, open formconnoted aformal organization, open endedness,and the break with formally constraining orders.

The patio, or court-house, form was almost a sinequa non of low-dense housing. The introspectivehouse was seen as the key to a high-density urbanhabitat supporting the social attributes of theCasbah concept. Such housing structures could bedesigned as open systems and provide variations ingroupings and house form. The patio house was akey element of this new urbanism and the subject ofconsiderable research. Numerous projects of theperiod investigated its potential. Chermayeff andAlexander’s research was undertaken within theframework of concepts that attributed particularvalues to this housing type [9a]. Among numerousexamples of the ‘rediscovery’ of this historic formand its exploration in new urban housing was JoseLuis Sert’s own house in Cambridge (1958) [9b] whichwas originally conceived as a prototype for such



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7 The culmination of aperiod in which thevertical city and thevillage wereconflated. Habitat,Montreal by MosheSafdie, 1967



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8 High-rise circulationand spatial systemdesign was the subject of intenseinvestigation in the1950sa Social and urbanideology applied to

organizational fabric.Park Hill, Sheffield byWomersley, Lynn andSmith, 1955-65 b Checker-boardstacking enablingshaded outdoorspaces. Semiramis

block, Algeria byATBAT, 1955c Continuous low-rise clusters andintegrated pathsystems. Housing,Casablanca byStuder, 1954

housing. There were also various projects for thestacking of patio-houses, through which higherdensities could be achieved.

Mat-building: the morphology of Casbah beyondhousing

Attributes rather than forms In their ‘Mat-Building’ paper of 1974, the Smithsons’theoretical statement on the issues, attributes,morphology and practice of high-density, low-risecontinuous systems for urban structures beyondhousing, Alison Smithson wrote:

‘Mat-building can be said to epitomize the anonymouscollective; where the functions come to enrich the fabric,and the individual gains new freedoms of action througha new and shuffled order, based on interconnection, close-knit patterns of association, and possibilities for growth,diminution and change.’

Smithson virtually summarized the thoughts of hergeneration at this important transition: shepresented the ideology of Casbah and its moregeneric form, ‘mat-building’, on the basis of itsattributes rather than its forms. Hers was ageneration for which architecture was a spatial art,and the language of spatial fabric was the medium ofthe architect-urbanist. Disciplinary knowledgeconcerned the precedents that supported thederivation of spatial structures.

Smithson’s ‘functions come to enrich the fabric’ isreminiscent of Herman Hertzberger’s approach tofunctional design through ambiguous form (Reinink1989). The ‘new and shuffled orders’ of low-dense,continuous, urban structures, or mat-buildings,were seen as providing the foundations for newsocial possibilities such as ‘close-knit patterns ofassociation’. Finally, mat-building was seen as thevehicle of preference for realizing one of the greatvisions of this generation, a time-related dynamicarchitecture which would provide ‘possibilities forgrowth, diminution and change’.

Mat-building took the form of continuous,extensible low-dense urban structure. At this basiclevel of definition Smithson swept in broad strokesacross historical, vernacular and contemporaryworks. These included the pyramid complex atSaquarra, as well as Chinese and North Africanvernacular architecture, Katsura and Fatehpur Sikri– all of which were among the rediscovered historicicons of ’50s and ’60s published literature. Besidesthese she displayed the important urban systemsdesigns of Candilis, Josic, Woods. First and foremostamong these was the partially realized masterpieceof the genre – the Free University Berlin (master plan,1963) [10a]. Also included were some of their otherimportant schemes, such as the Frankfurt TownCentre Competition scheme of 1963 [10b], soparadigmatic for mat-building, and works of theSmithsons themselves and of van Eyck. Le Corbusierand Jullian’s Venice Hospital of 1965 [10c] was alsoretrospectively classified as a ‘mat-building’ and thusrepresentative of what had by then become a leadingconceptual tendency in European architecture.Other works such as Mies’ projects for court-house

complexes and Kahn’s Philadelphia Roads Study wereillustrated as ‘new readings’ made possible by anawareness of the idea of mat-buildings.

Infrastructure architectureMat-building, or carpet-type structures oforganization, followed several morphologicalprinciples. Among these were complexes ofrepetitive, serial elements and complex grids, orlattice, organization. Beyond this firstmorphological level of additive, or grid-basedarchitecture, other mat-building works also utilizedan open hierarchical order as the means to achievemore complex systems. In the centre of the Smithsonarticle, a sculpture by Louise Nevelson was illustratedwith the explanation ‘… Apparent sameness madethe carrying order’. Here the assemblage of boxescreated a carrying order for the eclectic clusters of



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9 Patio or court-housesreflected the Casbahconcept and werethe subject ofconsiderableresearch – as in thesetwo examples byYale and Harvardarchitectureprofessorsa Architect’s house,New Haven by SergeChermayeff, 1963b Architect’s house,Cambridge, Mass byJose Luis Sert, 1958

10 Mat-building tookthe form of acontinuous, low-dense urbanstructurea Free UniversityBerlin by Candilis,Josic, Woods, 1963b Frankfurt TownCentre Competitionalso by Candilis,Josic, Woods, 1963c Venice HospitalProject, secondscheme, by LeCorbusier, 1965

11 Low-dense openconfigurative designwas more widelyadopted in theNetherlands thanelsewhere. TheCentraal Beheeroffice, Apeldoorn byHerman Hertzberger(a Forum Groupmember), 1968-72,was a masterpiece ofthis genre



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12 Among the designsinfluenced by theCasbah concept wasthe desert town atBe’er Sheva, Negevby Yaski,Alexandroni, Havkin,Zolotov and Carmi,1958-66. The aim wasto provide anappropriate localform for aneighbourhood in a

desert climatea Original site planshowing thejuxtaposition of twotypologies of thecollective: slab andCasbahb As-built site planc Model of the as-built schemed Computer modelof the as-builtscheme

e Detail of Casbahf Detail of slabg Experimentalneighbourhood by D. and A. Havkinshowing view intocontinuous paths of mat-housingh Typical plans oflow-rise clusterhousing by D. and H.Havkin

sculptural elements placed within them. Theanalogy to architecture and urbanism is well taken.It is an attribute of such hierarchically orderedsystems that the separation into independentphysical systems enables each level to be organizeddifferently in spatial terms.

Another important principle of design appearswhere the supporting structure was designed as aseparate and independent physical system ratherthan a movement space. This was the basic conceptunderlying ‘infrastructure architecture’ and‘support structures’. The Free University Berlin has aspatial matrix into which the functional spaces wereplugged and free to change, or be exchanged, as timeand function demand. The idea of spatial matrices as‘supporting hierarchical levels’ was adopted as a

morphological principle in mat-building just as itwas in high-rise building.

In the Netherlands, more than in any othercountry, low-dense open configurative design gainedground and one of masterpieces of the genre wascreated there by one of the original members of theForum Group. Herman Hertzberger’s CentraalBeheer Office Building in Apeldoorn (1968-72) [11]manipulated the idea as a counter-form to anotherimportant concept of the period, office landscape, inan attempt to imbue the flexible spatialenvironment of open office planning with scale andidentity.

A Cartesian Casbah

Settlements in a young StateCasbah and its related body of concepts becamecentral to architectural discourse throughout theworld during the early ’60s. Among the designsproduced as a result of these ideas was anexperimental neighbourhood (1958-66) in Be’erSheva, a desert city in the Negev region of Israel.Since the population of the young state wascomposed of Jewish immigrants from every part ofthe world, social integration was one of theobjectives of state planning for residentialneighbourhoods. Just as there was one right modelfor the ‘new Israeli’, so there was to be one model forthe state’s new towns and neighbourhoods. The



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objective was to culturally homogenize and ignorethe diversity of ethnic origins, rather than tocelebrate it.

Initially the most commonly applied precedentwas that of the British Garden City. The reality,however, did not match the dream. The gardens, aproduct of English planning, did not bloom in theMiddle-Eastern climate, and the large distancesbetween the houses impeded the formation ofneighbourly relations. In the desert towns in thesouthern part of the state, the utopian dreamsvanished with the first sandstorms that entered aneighbourhood and its houses. It took the firstdecade of the state and its planning institutions(1948-1958) to realize that this approach did notwork.

The Be’er Sheva experimentInspired by the 1957 Interbau constructionexhibition in West Berlin, the Ministry of Housing setout to explore new models of housing better fitted tolocal conditions and populations. Among theseprojects was an experimental neighbourhoodinitiated in the desert town of Be’er Sheva. A group ofyoung Israeli architects (A. Yaski, A. Alexandroni, N.Zolotov, D. Havkin and R. Carmi) were asked to plan aneighbourhood of 3000 dwelling units. The planningaim was to construct a local building form. AvrahamYaski (1968) specified the following objectives:finding an appropriate solution for aneighbourhood in a desert climate; developingstructural solutions that would facilitatemaintenance by the immigrant population; andmaterializing the concept of cluster as a clear-cutphysical and social element in the urban pattern. Thedesire to close the neighbourhood off from the cruelwinds of the desert sandstorms and to shade outdoorareas from the burning sun led the planners to viewlow-dense housing as a possibility. This was alsoreminiscent of the vernacular housing of Morocco,from where many of the immigrants came.

The experimental neighbourhood was planned onthe basis of a system of low-dense housing, proposedby Havkin and Zolotov. One- and two-storey patterns

of mat-type housing covered most of the groundspace in the neighbourhood. Every apartment hadtwo yards of 57 to 85 square metres in area. In orderto protect the residents from sandstorms and dust,the yards were surrounded on all sides by walls tobecome courtyards. The front yards of one row ofhouses were placed 3 metres away from the frontyards of the opposite row, so that a narrow andprotected path was created between the rows ofhouses. The backyards were placed adjacent to thebackyards of the next row. The pathways werepartially shaded by second-storey rooms, thuscreating a network of covered streets.

In order to delimit and identify the newneighbourhood as well as to protect it from thedesert, the plan proposed a boundary formed bylong slab-like buildings inspired by Le Corbusier’sUnité. Two diagonal axes for vehicular traffic crossedthe neighbourhood and a straight central axis forpedestrians connected the central mat-housing withone of the long blocks and community facilities.Neighbourhood gardening areas were planned alongthese axes.

As constructed, the neighbourhood did not followthe original plan. There were many changes in theoverall plan and, in the end, only one of the longbuildings, designed by Yaski and Alexandroni, wasbuilt. Raised on pilotis it was planned with duplexapartments and long corridors that constituted, itwas hoped, a ‘street in the air’. The mat-buildings,however, were built as designed, and to this dayconstitute one of Israel’s most interestingexperiments with the ideas of Casbah [12a-h]. Theproject was influential in promoting the concept inIsrael and was followed by other works [13].

The experiment evaluatedMat-housing was an innovation in Israeli publichousing. Accordingly, following the completion andoccupation of the first 1000 units in 1965, itseffectiveness was subjected to a post-occupancyevaluation. This confirmed the success of thevernacular-climatic components of the mat pattern.These, as previously mentioned, were based onMoroccan, Algerian and Iranian precedents that haddeveloped historically to match desert conditions:the narrow paths provided shade for the pedestrians,the construction density prevented the adverseeffects of dust storms and the internal yards provedan appropriate solution for the desert climate. Theclearly defined ownership of the yards ensured theircultivation – unlike the ownerless public gardensthat had remained deserts in the earlier Garden Citymodel.

The designers’ primary intention had been toachieve a form suitable to its inhabitants, whichresponded to their cultural needs, which providedpersonal identity, and which fostered meeting and asense of community. The 1965 evaluation did notreveal as positive a response from its inhabitants asmight have been expected. However, in 2000, aninformal survey found this neighbourhood to be oneof the most popular public housing areas in Be’erSheva. It still possesses all of the positive indicators of



13

13 The continuing ethosof the Casbah.Regional Centre,

Pithat Rafiah, Sinaiby Y. Drexler and Z.Druckman, 1972

an active community. Despite the small size of thedwellings, they are, in fact, terraced private houses towhich there is some status attached as compared toapartments in multi-family buildings. Despite theirsmall size, the owners have found ingenious waysover the years to expand their homes.

The disappointment with crowded modern citiesand the loss of personal and local identity raisedmany questions in the ’50s and ’60s. Seeking a sourcefor new ideas in the patterns of planned settlements,the architects and researchers of that generationseemed on the verge of discovering a way to anarchitecture of social institutions. Not only did theseforms appear to have an affinity with the culturalorigins of their users, but they promised somedegree of independence and freedom even withinthe context of public housing. If, in hindsight, anycriticism is to be levelled at Be’er Sheva, it is that thesmall scale and Cartesian clarity of the grid turnedout to be a constraint on the evolution of thesettlement. This rigid grid was perceived as arbitraryby the inhabitants and later caused difficulties. Asthe years passed, little space was left for structuralmodifications and when they occurred, many werenot planned in advance but were executed in animprovisory manner, usually at the expense of thesmall courtyards. Eventually, the lack of ability toadjust the houses to changing standards causedneighbourhood aging and the departure of well-offresidents.

Incomplete questions, untested ideas and unrealized projects …Over less than a decade in the ’60s, the Casbahconcept had evolved to include other ideas such as

low-dense housing, continuous systems, mat-building, open form and hierarchical open systems.Its permutations and the richness of interpretationwithin the architectural discourse of the perioddemonstrated the viability of these ideas and theirability to transcend the limits of the ideologicalsources of which they were a part. Beyond theparticular problem of human habitat, theimplications of these ideas were great and producedseveral masterpieces such as Habitat and the FreeUniversity Berlin.

Casbah symbolized the discourse of configurativeknowledge. Its roots lay in spatial structure andorganization. It was a manifesto for the primacy ofspatial structure as domain knowledge. By the mid tolate ’60s structure was declining as the leadingconceptual paradigm of the period, and othertheories were evolving and ascending in importance.However, the paradigm of structure had fostered arich body of ideas and enabled the development ofarchitectural research and methods that continue tothis day.

This was the last period in which the social fabricof housing was a central theoretical focus for thedesign professions. It was also the end of a uniquephase of experimentation and invention of newbuilding typologies. Today, this can be seen as part ofthe ‘unfinished project of Modernism’ andarchitectural culture awaits the opportunity toreturn to the many questions left incomplete, ideasuntested, and projects unrealized. In the meantime,the many examples of experiment that these ideasfostered throughout the world stand as a tribute totheir generative power.



ReferencesArchitectural Design (1956).

‘Chamberlin, Powell and Bon:Urban High-density Housing’,Architectural Design, October, p327.

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Candilis, G., Josic, A. and Woods, S.(1968). A Decade of Architecture andUrban Design, Karl Kramer Verlag,Stuttgart.

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Smithson, A. (1974). ‘Mat-Building’, inArchitectural Design, vol 44, no 9,pp573-590.

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Yaski, A. (1968). Quoted in: Hirsch, A.,Sharshevski, R., Occupants’ reactionson the planning of apartment andneighbourhood in the ExperimentalHousing Project in Be’er Sheva. Ministryof Housing, Unit of Social andEconomic Research, 1968, Foreword,pp1-5.

BiographyRobert Oxman is the former Dean ofthe Faculty of Architecture and TownPlanning, Technion Israel where heholds the Karplus Chair ofArchitecture and Design. Hepublishes frequently on the history ofmodern Israeli architecture.

Hadas Shadar has recentlycompleted her doctoral thesis on theurban history of the Israeli desert cityof Be’er Sheva.

Ehud Belferman has undertakenresearch on the experimentalneighbourhood in Be’er Sheva.

Author’s addressProfessor Robert OxmanFaculty of Architecture and TownPlanningTechnion Israel Institute ofTechnologyHaifa , Israel [email protected]

Illustration creditsarq gratefully acknowledges:Atbat, 8bEhud Belferman, 12b and cEhud Belferman and Eyal Nir, 12 d-fCandilis, Josic, Woods, 10aSerge Chermayeff, 9aFondation Le Corbusier, 10cForum, 1, 2a and c, 3a and b, 5a and bD. and H. Havkin, 12g and hHerman Hertzberger, 11Karguel, 10bMoore, Lyndon, Turnbull, 6cLouis Reeus, 9bDavid Roberts, 2cPaul Rudolph, 6aEero Saarinen, 6bH. Shadar, 13Studer, 8cH. Tempest, 8aEitaro Torihata, 4bUnknown photographer, 7Albert Winkler, 4aYaski, Alexandroni, D. and R. Carmi,

Zolotov and Havkin, from IsraelBuilds published by Ministry ofHousing, Israel, 12a

AcknowledgementsMuch of the research and writingwas accomplished while the firstauthor was a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2000-2001. He thanks Dean Peter Rowe for the exemplary conditions forscholarship provided by the school and acknowledges the supportof the Karplus Chair in Architecture and Environmental Design.

This paper is dedicated to thememory of Architect Daniel Havkin,one of the architects of theexperimental neighbourhood inBe’er Sheva, who devoted much of hislife to the education of youngarchitects.



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