Constructing Dignity: Primitivist Discourses and the Spatial Economies of Development in Postcolonial Tunisia (original) (raw)

2019, Social Housing in the Middle East: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Modernity

I nciting his readers' empathy and pity in a 1953 newspaper editorial on "Habitat: Universalism and Regionalism" in the Zürcher Zeitung, Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968), a Swiss art and architectural historian and secretary-general for the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM), called attention to the question of how architecture can generate dignity while conforming to the environmental and cultural norms of a region.1 Addressing the dire living conditions of both rural and urban areas scattered across the Maghreb, his title spoke to the urgency of the broader global problematic of habitat. That also happened to be the theme of CIAM's Ninth International Congress, which convened at the École des Arts et Métiers in Aix-en-Provence, France, from July 19 to 21, 1953. From the Atlas Mountains in Morocco to other so-called remote and faroff villages nestled in the Sahara, stretching between Algiers and Tunis, people make do with the realities and material constraints of their environment. Singling out the bidonville, or "tin-can,'" towns, constructed mostly from metal refuse, Giedion underscored the grim quality of life prevalent throughout the entirety of postwar North Africa, but he also cited the work of architect Pierre-André Emery (1903-1982)2 and his team, consisting of