Grant
No.

10-059Research Report
Name :

Tara Abdulrazak Alimardan

Organization (at the time of the grant):

北海道大学 大学院工学院 建築都市空間デザイン専攻
空間計画講座 建築計画学研究室

Title of Research: Post War Public Housing Reconstruction in Iraq
Using of visual social methodologies to investigate and analyse post war Iraqi
housing situation in a selected metropolitan Iraqi cities

Purpose of Research:
Iraq now is in the focus of the drastic developments of the contemporary history of Middle
East. From the 1980, Iraq was under a series of destructive war from the Iraqi-Iranian conflict tothe surrender to the Americans in 2003. As a matter of fact, war periods always connected withdramatic changes in the structure of the society, people’s way of living and the built environmentof the city. Briefly, we can summarize two faces of the changes in the built environment before
and after 2003. Firstly, the dramatic cut with the traditionally built environment began in the1950s of the last century with the intercalation of the modernism in the third world societies. Then,the word (modern) translated successively into many architectural aspects. However, most of its
attributes belongs to ideals or upper strategies far from the real knowledge of the essences of theIraqi living environment. Except in few attempts of single solutions of individual architects thatmostly reflected in the houses of the rich families, the ordinary people, especially the poor,
always suffers from the attempts to adapt their inherited way of living to the transported modelsof the few accomplished pre-war public housing projects (in the 1980s and 1990s). Accompaniedwith the above circumstances, post war housing (after 2003) suffers from substantial
deterioration of living standards, badly damaged infrastructure, official and management
instability and finally and most importantly is shortage in producing mega housing projects.
Moreover, post war period is characterized by the emergence of a new democratic society. Thatgave a new power to the individuals in expressing the specialty of their way of living, social
principles and inherited habits.
In a review to the post war housing research studies we found that the centralized role of thegovernment, the almost nonexistent role to the private companies and the multi theoretical
attitude of the university studies that mostly far from real circumstance, made an explicit lack instudies that deals with the onsite housing problems especially for the ordinary people.
According to the above we can formulate the purpose of our research as investigating theappropriate way to deal with the post war housing problems in the light of the new society
symbolization, evaluating the qualify the actual housing situation and extracting the ideals thatguide the reconstruction process in Iraq to build socially adequate built environment for thegovernmental public housing. And finally (which still under research) we aim to propose
suggestions to a housing model that can satisfy a variety of post war housing requirements inIraq.

Content/Methodology of Research:
In attempt to fulfil the aspects of the housing situation in post war Iraq, our research divided
into steps according to the purposes of the research from the most general to the most specific.
In our investigation for the appropriate way to deal with the post war housing we tried to specify
the general directions and tendency of the research. Tracking suitable model for thereconstruction process, put us in the trade-offs between the pragmatic short term goals ofimmediate housing and the long term goals of developing a housing environment that reflects
the life of inhabitants.
However departure point was that the reconstruction process in spite of providing aids, funds
and material, is actually a process of reconstructing the community. So, the subjectivity of theIraqi individual is the real actors behind rebuilding process, through local way in problem solving
and decision process. A true post war housing recovery should be based on creating a sociallyadequate physical environment. Therefore the direct reconstruction efforts should be redirectedfrom the current pragmatic short-sighted goals to the wider objectives of constituting social
capital and social cultural community that helps to manage a process in which people can live intheir own choice.
In our first paper (The Possibility of Social Principles of Architectural Planning on Housing
Situation in Post-War Iraq), we investigated a possible approach to overcome the difficulty oflacking a suitable model for the reconstruction process in Iraq by identifying an appropriate
metaphor in countries or nations that faced the same grand challenges. The similarity of post war
destruction and the pioneering of the model, make the Japanese experience a proper metaphor
for the Iraq case. So, we adopted the Japanese Architectural Planning Research (APR) with aspecial emphasis on the social approach of Uzo Nishiyama, especially his lifestyle theory. APR
mainly focuses on (life and space) due to its historical and social aspects. In his life style theory,
Nishiyama attributed the success and fail of the space according to the space ability to reflect thechanges in the lifestyle of the ordinary Japanese people in the post war era. In our second
paper(Typing Theory in Post War Japanese Architecture Planning, Lessons for the Iraqi Post WarSituation) we explained the architectural application of the above idea .APR concerned withdeciding ideals rather than standards for value judgment, decisions making and evaluations ofhousing solution in post war period. So, APR depended on the Idea of type to harmonize both thedemocracy and advancement as source of change in post war days. According to suchbackground, Nishiyama developed his idea of plan type in which the house is a result ofexamining and considering society. He tried to draw analogy between laws of life process inordinary people dwelling with modern way of living. In an attempt to follow the same strategy, wedeveloped the idea of Typing Theory that works on estimating the value of relativity of change,
trying to connect advancement and rapid improvement of living, individuality, and unitary face ofcommon type. So, we decided that investigating ordinary people housing will provide the ideals
for the reconstruction process.
In a field work survey, we were able to define main distinctive feature of housing experience inthe collective dwelling, the Arbitrary Housing (AH) or the informal settlement, from thegovernmental public housing and the housing units built by the private companies. Throughinterviews and investigation of the every day life in our third paper (An Analysis of Arbitrary
Housing in Post-War Iraq Housing Experience) we found that the arbitrary housing is the fertile
land for providing the ideals of the Iraqi people housing design. We extended the idea of typing
theory to develop what we called Ethno Typed Built Environment (ETBE) to describe the arbitrary
housing environment. The term ETBE intended to describe a built environment governed by its
surroundings, where the last bestowed typical similarities upon the first. Circumstances here givethe distinction to AH built environment by its unique ethno-characters as collectively decided bypeople. We used ethonmethodology in general and its documentary method in special to analyze
the scene of life in the arbitrary housing and as (ETBE) such environment provided a goodexample to reflect the dominance of social principles on the housing spaces arrangement.
Despite the fact that space arrangement still suffers many architectural mistakes as theses
houses were built by the inhabitants themselves. In our forth paper (Using the Space Syntax toClarify the Socio-Spatial Characteristics of the Governmental Public Housing Solutions in PostWar Iraq) we utilized the space syntax theory to investigated the public housing built projects aperiod from 2003 to 2010. Although it is experience here is still premature, the aim was toevaluate the space arrangement and predict family movement in these units in the light of thespatial configurations which extracted from the (ETBE).
Conclusion/Observation
From the general observations and analysis of the current housing problem, it was possible toconclude that beside the problems of administrative and financial management the dilemma of
Iraq post war housing situation is expressed by lacking of a suitable model for reconstruction

process. By using a metaphor for a leading post-war experience like that of japans, we wereable to decide the generality of our theoretical frame work as follows. Post war appropriate
housing model is a model that satisfies the short range requirements of ordinary people for mass
housing, while achieved the long term notion of creating a physical environment that reflect
ordinary people real life. The main learned lesson from post war APR is its attitude towardchange and individuality. From the APR, we were able to extract the idea of Typing Theory as a
background for a model type that Justify people individual way of living with continuous socialand cultural changes in post war era. In addition, we deduced from the works of Nishiyama thatpeople individual way of living and life style are mostly reflected in the ordinary people dwelling.
We have found an equivalent for that idea in the AH gatherings in Baghdad. We developed thenotion of ETBE to explain that special interference between social and built environmentexperiences. By utilizing ethnomethodological analysis, we identified that the main social idealsof lifestyle of the Iraqi family are the dominance of religious doctrines, group affiliation, separationof the genders, accumulation and sharing of experiences. These ideals were the deciding
principles for the space arrangement in AH units. In addition, space syntax analysis revealed that
ETBE is a functional space cantered layout with special importance to the (Entrance) space as
inside-outside transition and the (Living-Cooking) space as a transition from the isolated generalspaces to the most private one. When compared to ETBE, we found that it is difficult to findsimilar spatial characteristics within a sample of post war governmental public housing units. Inaddition, it is difficult to identify a specific spatial trend within the considered sample, which
dominated by a type based on repetition of standardized solutions. On the other hand, the resultsof social speculation of the syntactic analysis indicates that the spatial orders in ETBE is
successful in respecting the social habits of the Iraqi family, especially gender separation, theprivacy of the woman space and, the protection of the inhabitants movements from the visitors’line of vision. In contrast, the spatial order of only some of the units within the public housing ispartially addressed these social themes, while the remaining units, are good examples ofignoring the social perspectives of the Iraqi family.