Project
Barbera Delmonaco
- Additional, basic observations
Taking into consideration all the indications of the Competition documents – that we do not quote – here we only add some personal considerations. In the framework of a very critical situation and of an actually abnormal genesis, Ein Hud village suffers, in an extreme way, of the same urban, architectural and social diseases that affect the most part of the new, small Middle East spontaneous settlings: - complete neglect of the traditional, wise, sustainable house typology, introverted, well sun exposed, perfectly ventilated, soundly constructed, energy saving, rich of spatial differences in a limited dimension - open patio(s), sheltered open rooms, shadowed inner rooms, guest living room – so as to meet both the need of environmental comfort and the demand of a strong culture of the family and of the Community; - impossibility (or neglect) to think the village or the estate as a unity of functional, practical and symbolic terms; so that all the new villages or estates, with their disintegrating layout and with their very low quality of the public and private spaces openly declare the casual, fortuitous implementation of their realization, the social distress of the inhabitants, the lack of identity of the place and of the Community; - serious lack of infrastructures, even in traditional terms: not only schools, public parking, social services, Community centres are very rare or absent, but even the traditional market streets (souk), that used to be one of the most important social centres of the towns (not to take into consideration the contribution of the souks to the economy of many families) cannot take form and life because of the broken lay-out of the private buildings, scattered at random, casually detached from each other, not forming a possible, appealing commercial front alongside the streets; - not often, in the new spontaneous villages, the religious and cultural centre of the estate is realized as the actually City Crown, the utmost expression of the Community, its actual architectural focus.
Planning guide lines In principle the present and the future dimension of the village deserves more a group of architectural guidelines than a real Master Plan. Presently the village includes little more than two hundred people; in future, also taking into consideration a strong growth rate (6% per year) and a possible success of the Community due to the implementation of a new sustainable urban policy, so to increase the attraction factor of the village for new comers from other Arab-Israeli Communities, we count that no more than 600 hundred people will form the community of Ein Hud in the next twenty years. In this situation the Plan that we present establishes the form of each plot and the main characteristics of the typologies. And gives the most attention and care to the building up of the overall architectural structure and symbolic image of the village. Therefore we suggest that the Community (or Municipality) shall detail, with our contribution, the guidelines of the two Dwelling Types that we propose. Public Buildings, on the contrary, will be left to future, architect’s free proposals. It is intended that in the first phase of the implementation of the Plan, the Community has to help the inhabitants, with a consistent technical help, in building their own houses following the guidelines of the Plan. The general form of the village is decided by the morphology of the site and by the correct exposition to the sun. It has been chosen to expand the village mainly on the slope facing South West and South, while few new houses complete and give a definite boundary to the present, scattered estate. For the present group of houses it is suggested to study a unified system of fences, trees and border walls as to give a certain degree of order and beauty to the public spaces among the buildings.
Two are the types of Dwelling Buildings suggested, both based on the concept of the courtyard house. One is laid on the slope and is a big house, with a mayor courtyard and minor patios. It can be divided in two different houses. The other type is a smaller courtyard house, L shape, with an upper floor if necessary. The cultural Centre, based on the Religious Space (Mosque) crowns the hill and the village, realizing the main focus of the project and giving a sense of unity to the different parts of the village, the present estate and the future expansions.
CONTACT: Lucio Barbera /
PROFESSION: Architecture
CODE: abcd
