Texto de la ponencia de quince minutos de duración leída por Tiziano Schürch en el congreso anual de la American School of Oriental Research (ASOR) el viernes pasado en San Diego (EEUU)
IN SEARCH OF
LOST SPACE:
UNDER THE PROTECTION OF RUINS
New paradigms on protective shelters in the
Middle East
Pedro
Azara & Tiziano Schürch (UPC-ETSAB, Barcelona)
This paper is a summery of the research project
for exhibition we are preparing, which deals with architectonical interventions
in archaeological sites.
Introduction
This presentation deals with an issue that
is becoming increasingly common in architecture and archaeology: how to relate
to the architecture of the past. How to build on territories which have been
built on for hundreds or thousands of years, in order to protect, to study and
to make accessible archaeological finds for scholars and tourists.
More specifically, we shall discuss the
different paradigms behind the construction of protective shelters as a very
specific kind of architectonical intervention in which the relation between
archaeology and architecture, past and present, archaeological finds and new
buildings, is particularly delicate. We shall deal with structures that beside
their conservative function enable people to visit the architectural remains
and help to interpret them. These interventions must be reversible and, if the
excavations are still taking place, they should be located in a way that they
do not interfere with the digs or the understanding of the site. Such projects
range from an always partial or temporary protection, undertaken soon after a
discovery, to large structures thought to protect and make accessible the
excavation for the next generations.
Protective shelters on archaeological
sites are a field in great expansion. Different disciplines, priorities and
sensibilities toward the past and its interaction with the present have to
interweave in order to formulate the best answer to the task. Archaeologists,
architects, artists, engineers, historians, anthropologists, etc., have to
establish a dialogue. Different approaches are possible as the great number and
the variety of examples all-over the world show. Unfortunately, despite the
large number of archaeological excavations, only very few examples can be found
in the Middle East.
The aim of this paper is to outline a
possible starting point for the development of a new paradigm on protective
shelters in the Middle East. The attempt is not to understand how they should
be built, but to understand what should be considered in their designing
process.
The very specific conditions of
archaeological sites in the Middle East (especially in Iraq and partly in
Syria), urges the need for the construction of protective shelters. Without any
conservative intervention, excavated built structures last for only a few
years. Ancient structures such as walls (mostly built with sun-dried bricks
with very few terracotta bricks) collapse due to the rain, erosion caused by
the wind and dust, and phreatic waters.
Shelter
and site, different approaches
What does it mean to protect an
archaeological site with a shelter?
Of course, such an intervention deals with
the question of the re-introduction of the third dimension, there where the
finds exist only as shallow remains. Building a roof means to define a volume,
it means to re-construct a lost space. The new structure can establish
different relations with the archaeological remains, depending on the adopted
approach and its resulting features. We think that two main approaches are
possible.
Shelter
as an infrastructural matter:
Here we deal with interventions that
justifies the choice of the form, of materials and the size of the new
construction as a mere result of static, conservational and efficiency
criteria.
Those kinds of interventions understand
the new construction as scientific product, as an infrastructure. Beside this
very functional and almost neutral approach to the design of the structure, the
perception of the archaeological site is always deeply affected by the new
construction, wanted or not.
The result of such an approach, are often
structures that occupy the site without establishing any clear relation with
it. The new structure exists as a foreign element that underlines his autonomy
toward the archaeological finds. It is, for example, the case of the shelter
for remains of an old synagogue in the Kibbutz of Ein Gedi, by Guggenheim &
Bloch Architects. Here it seems that the architects sought to stress the formal
and material difference between the shelter and what the shelter covers.
Protective shelters such as this one, made out of stretched canvas, and light
metal structures, are a very common solution to the need of a protective
shelter. Rarely such shelters establish a real dialogue with what they protect
and, paradoxically, often gain a protagonist role in the perception of the
site.
In other cases, the very infrastructural,
neutral approach can produce unforeseen aesthetic relations between shelter and
archaeological finds, giving more importance and presence to the site. In the
intervention from the seventies by the architect Emilio Pérez Piñero in the
paleo-Christian cemetery of Tarragona, the light and translucent vaults on thin
steel pillars, can even evoke the luminous and otherworldly destiny of the
souls of the dead.
It is also interesting to comment the
effect produced by some kind of large enveloping structures, such as the interventions
by the Turkish creative studio Atölye in the Neolithic sites of Çatal Hüyuk and
of Askli Hoyuk. They consist of roofs that have nothing to do, formally or
typologically, with the protected remains. They do not want to give the
impression that they are re-building anything. The shelter creates a sort of
bubble, isolating the suite from the surrounding. The visitor can get the
impression of having been transported to another land, maybe to another time.
Shelter
as a poetical matter:
Another way to answer to the question on
how the new construction should relate to archaeological finds can be through a
more architectural approach. The architect establishes the shape in dialogue
with archaeologists, historians and engineers. The context is observed,
analysed and understood not only as a matter of scientifically measurable
quantitative features, but also, and primarily, as a matter of cultural,
historical, social, symbolic and poetical aspects. How should the visitor,
perceive the new construction? What should be the atmosphere? Which materials
should we chose in order to create a possible relation between the ancient and
the contemporary crafts present in the context? These are questions that could
arise by such an approach.
The shelter for the Roman ruins of a
thermal bath in Chur, in Switzerland, by the architect Peter Zumthor, in 1986,
consists of two volumes with tended roofs and wooden slats. The new
construction encloses the few surviving ruins not as an intent of recreate the
lost building, but with the attempt to create a connection between past and
present through atmosphere; atmosphere understood as the element that can
produce, in the “here and now”, an almost instinctive empathy for the past. The
walls act as a screen between the outside and inside. The atmosphere of the
city smoothly penetrates in the interior space through light, shadows and
sounds. The ruins, thanks to the shelter that works at night as a kind of
lantern that filters artificial light to the exterior, become part of the city.
The city is enlightened by the ruins.
Such an “evocative” approach is often
difficult to adopt in the case of Middle Eastern where archaeological sites are
characterized by the superposition of an impressive amount of construction
layers. This superposition causes practical and theoretical difficulties to the
desire to evoke a specific building from a specific time thanks to the shape of
a new shelter.
The most recent covering of the Pearling
Path, in Muharraq (Barhain), by the Swiss architect Valerio Olgiati, is another
interesting example. The shelter composed of concrete pillars and a concrete
flat roof covers a path through an ancient dense urban fabric. The intervention
attends different functions. It protects the site, it enlivens it, it clearly
marks it among the structure of the old city, it brings a most necessary shadow
for the visitors, and it defines two public buildings (the entrance and the
museum). In this example, the differentiation between archaeological finds and
architectural intervention is particularly subtle. Both existing columns and
new pillars interact in the construction of space. The existent urban structure
and the shelter are articulate in such a way that the shelter creates new
spaces and it brings new perspectives on the already existing city by
re-integrating the ancient structure in the city fabric.
Shelter
and site; an intimate relation:
In some cases shelters have almost become
more prominent than the ruins. We can think for example of the known shelter
designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. on the ruins of the Casa Grande, in
Arizona, in 1932. We can have in mind, too, the shelter that the Yugoslavian
architect Oton Jugovec designed and built in 1970 for the archaeological
remains of the medieval church of Gutenwerth. The image of the shelter has
replaced the image of the ruins of the church.
These shelters are not reconstructions,
they are certainly not mimetic, they do not reproduce a lost historical
building, but we do no longer think of the ruins without their protective
roofs.
Conclusions
Middle Eastern archaeological sites,
during and after their excavation, are particularly affected by the disruptive
effect of erosion. The propriety of the most common built material (adobe)
causes that, without any kind of protection, an excavated site would last only
a few years due the action of water, wind, and other agents of mechanical and
chemical erosion. The construction of protective shelters is probably the only
way to conserve and keep accessible an archaeological site. At the same time it
has to be considered that their construction can represent an obstacle to the
excavation process.
Archaeologists seem to have to face a
dilemma that they should tackle consciously and critically. They should either
excavate taking into consideration the limitation imposed by the presence of a
shelter, or they should decide to be able to excavate more freely, faster, and
with less costs, knowing that everything that will be excavated and exposed to
the light will disappear forever.
If archaeologists decide that the
excavation requires a protective roof, they should consider some aspects. A
shelter is not only a functional architectural element. It inevitably interacts
with the ruins; it affects their perception, in a good way, by helping to
understand the site, or in a bad way, by making the reading of the finds
difficult. Different approaches can be adopted, from very scientific ones, to
very poetic and sensitive approaches. But independently from the adopted
approach, in no case the new structure will exist as a neutral element.
A shelter introduces a third dimension
among remains often existing as horizontal, shallow constructions. It
introduces the dimension of space, the dimension of architecture, and possibly
the dimension of life. The place where human beings once lived can become,
through an appropriate intervention, the place where anyone, in a dreamed
future, could live again.
Barcelona, September-November 2019
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