In the Matter of Myself vs. Amman

In the matter of myself vs. Amman-the city, I decided to hang an original restored photo of Amman in my room. Cheers!

The Sexy Desert 99

It started as a conversation to impress on a walk on Rainbow Street after a long night and an Amaretto Sour; what makes Jordan’s sexiest architecture!

So, what makes architecture ‘sexy’? But before that, what does being ‘sexy’ mean? According to Psychology Today, its never the modelesque attributes, yet , and according to Scientific American, it’s the ‘dark’ personality traits that gives someone or, in my case, someplace the sex appeal. So if I want to translate this into Architecture it’s the sense of mystery and darkness that makes a designed space sexy.

Looking into Jordan’s Architecture, I would definitely argue that the vernacular desert architecture is the sexiest in Jordan. Driving through Jordan’s desert, you’d find how boring and monotonous it is. No ground cover, no ups and downs, no animals, nothing. A constant of silence that surrounds your senses from all 360 degrees. Then right on the horizon, here it appears, one bad-ass iconic building in the middle of nowhere, some desert castle or an Ammar Khammash lodge.

The usual formula of desert architecture is meant for the sole purpose of surviving the harsh dry climate of our part of the world: a thick shell with very minimal or no openings, as much inner microclimates as possible to control the temperature, sun breakers to lessen the glare and an introverted public space with greenery and water features.

In the eyes of an Arab, the most sensual is not revealed, but covered. In the Arab world, the pictures of those who are promoted for their sex appeal are usually of women fully covered with their eyes showing, even Bedouin men are usually covered in layers and layers of clothes. That’s why the secret lies in the dance between the hidden and revealed, the sense of mystery and imagination which makes what’s considered most sexy.

In the desert architecture, the contrast between the out and the in is almost to its fullest; a real mystery is created here and there. Walking in Qasr Amra from the mundane outer silence, you can almost hear the Umayyad Caliph with his giggling concubines between the cold shadows of the thick walls. Another example is Azraq eco-lodge, which I loved, the transformation of color between the harsh outside stone front and the inner playful courts, I found intriguing.For that I vote Jordan’s most sexy architecture is the desert’s.

So, yeah..I wonder what would you think?

Aliens in Amman

Original Photo is
The Winter of Amman by Ala Hamdan.Reblogged by Tal’at Tasweer

This started as an argument between my friend, Michel, and I while driving past the Le Royal one day: Why is it we can’t imagine New York without the Guggenheim or the Rockefeller, yet we can easily imagine Amman without the Le Royal and the twin Jordan Gate towers? Why is that most, and I stress on most, Ammani Architects reject the current contemporary iconic discourse of the city. What makes an icon? How come all nation take pride in their tallest buildings, and we don’t? What is it that really..really.. makes us proud as residents of Amman?

In spite of the interlocking, inter-winded, multi-dimensional strata that make up our city, most people perceive Amman as the city made up of endless mountains of mundane modern white stone boxes. Thus, so to break the redundancy, and create a sense of place, in addition to the much needed pride and power, big buildings are sought after. After all we are a nation that appreciates the big.

A transformation was needed! A remote utopian vision of what the city should look like was the reference, to become more contiguous to our neighboring plastic metropolitan cities. The Burj, the Iskan building mutations started growing, and later on the King Abdullah Mosque and aliens like Le Royal and last, never the least, 6^th circle towers­­. No one can defend their existence; one has to simply live with them!

They exist! And their design formula: hulk-ish scale, strange unique geometry, distant metaphor, uncomfortable presence and a vague program. Who cares what’s it for anyway! Designed so not to fit.

The 6^th Circle Jordan Gate Towers that was built on the site of one of the very few vanishing public gardens in the city. The screwed a residential neighborhood is a great example to the hefty price people pay. Although still in construction phase, it succeeded in creating a dead zone around it, in addition to ignoring major problems of traffic and infrastructure in addition to few more serious environmental issues.

Another example, Le Royal: the Iraqi babel tower manifested in Amman. Even though stone was used, rather than a glass envelope, to blends with the adjacent mountain and its tiny white stone block, yet its geometry failed it.  The Le Royal did everything right; but it stayed an alien!

I understand that cities are not monolithic, especially boundary-less cities like Amman. They act as complex living organisms; they interact and survive mutations within their fabric. However, we have the talents of embedding the huge in a way to eat the neighborhoods around it and takes over them.

I’m not criticizing icons, I’m criticizing the how and where and when and what they represent. Why do we build them here and there, for postcards sake?

Will we ever be able to connect to these icons on a human scale?

Rotana Tower

durex: The end of the world shouldn't be the only thing coming

Homer Simpson’s Logic

Homer Simpson and Amman

When I was an architecture student in my senior year, doing my grad thesis in Wadi Musa- Petra Archeological Park, I was shocked to know that some narrow minded ‘major organization’ decided on bulldozing the Um Sayhun Village: where all the Bedul who are the original Bedouins of Petra, resided near PAP and worked in tourism.Why, to build a restaurant!!

I mean how shallow and flat their brains can be! How can you skim a multi-dimensional, multi-layered, complex site like Wadi Musa into the archeological ruins of the Nabateans alone, and bypass the Bedouin cultural heritage which is embedded within the layers of the Archeological site; the enormous number of tourists who come from all around the world, just to sleep a day or two in a nearby Bedouin tent; the complex economy of Wadi Musa that was built on the mere interaction between tourists and Bedouins, who claim being decedents of the Nabeteans themselves. But no- a restaurant with a view on Khazneh is priceless!

Today, I still face the same flat mentality in my day-to-day job. People still ask to close down an important city-marketing public space in order to extend a fucking restaurant. What is wrong with you people? I’m talking economy now. A city marketing, multi dimensional, hot spot will bring more costumers to whatever boring business you are running! We lack basic understanding of a city, and until we understand this living organism we live in, we’ll keep making those stupid ‘Homer Simpson’ –ish mistakes!

Insert brain here!

Dancing with the Shadow

Peter Zumthor, Bruder Klaus Kapelle, Mechernich, Germany, 2007
Photographed 2009

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.

Genesis 1:3-4

Shadows: are a moment of anti-light; absence; silence. How can you understand light without the shadow?

In music you start with silence starts and end with silence, how can you hear music with no silence?

With light the world started; existed whilst dancing with the shadows. One can’t exist without the other.

It makes reflect on the reality of our world a little. The paradox religion presents: evil and good. How can something exist without the other?

How can I experience ultimate good, grace, love and other virtues without experiencing the evil. What would heaven be like if it was the ultimate good! How will I see the light?

Naked Architecture

The most exciting thing happened to me this Sunday:  I went to a real construction site! An experience I was waiting for quite sometime now.

It’s just magical to witness the building naked; a sculpture of walls and void.

I was lucky and thrilled to be in one of Ammar Khammash’s projects in the making. It exceeded my expectations!

I’ve always felt like my career as an architect was hijacked from me by an ugly demon that hold the name: recession. I never got the chance to experience projects being build and shaped into reality of existing masses. I vaguely know the layers of a real project: electric sockets, mechanical shit, gas piping, water tanks! So, I took what you might consider crazy, from a financial point of view, to be the slave (not really, but somehow) of a famous design office with projects being implemented, for two days a week. I couldn’t calm my eagerness to know and experience naked architecture.

Sunday for me was a fast walk in the reality of ‘building’ and ‘creating’! Paste qsarra, block partition, the loooong discussion of kitchen piping and electric sockets.I never knew that a 2-d drawing is a merely guideline of 30% of what really really goes on.

I’m fired up to what would the next Sunday bring.