Alessandro Camiz ¹ ¹ Department of Architecture, Girne American University, Cyprus, Association for Historical Dialogue and Research, Home for Cooperation (H4C), 28 Marcou Dracou Street, Nicosia, Cyprus, 1102. E-mail: alessandrocamiz@gau.edu.tr Keywords (3-5): urban tissues, urban morphology, urban routes, theory, history Conference topics and scale: Tools of analysis in urban morphology Recent urban morphology studies consider urban tissues as living organisms changing in time (Strappa, Carlotti, Camiz, 2016), following this assumption the theory should examine more analytically what Muratori called ‘medievalisation’ (Muratori, 1959), a term describing some of the transformations of urban routes happened in the middle ages. The paper considers the diachronic deformation of routes, and other multi-scalar occurrences of the attraction phenomena (Charalambous, Geddes, 2015), introducing the notion of attractors and repellers. Archaeological studies already do consider attractors and repellers as a tool to interpret some territorial transformations, following the assumption that “the trajectory that a system follows through time is the result of a continuous dynamic interaction between that system and the multiple 'attractors' in its environment” (Renfrew, Bahn, 2013, p. 184). There are different elements that can act as attractors in an urban environment, such as bridges, city walls, city gates, water systems, markets, special buildings, and it is possible to consider each of these anthropic attractors as equivalent to a morphological attractor at the geographical scale. We can even interpret the ridge-top theory (Caniggia, 1976) as the result of attraction and repellence of geographic features on anthropic routes. The territorial scale analysis is the methodological base of the theory, but the attractors herein considered operate at the urban scale, deviating locally across time from a rectilinear trajectory and defining a specific urban fabric. The research interprets and reads the effects of attractors on urban routes and fabrics as a method for the reconstruction of Nicosia’s medieval city walls, in continuity between the Conzenian approach (Whitehand, 2012) and the Italian School of Urban Morphology (Marzot, 2002). References:, Muratori, S. (1959) Studi per un’operante storia urbana di Venezia (Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Roma). Caniggia, G. (1976) Strutture dello spazio antropico. Studi e note (Uniedit, Firenze). Marzot, N. (2002) ‘The study of urban form in Italy’, Urban Morphology 6.2, 59-73. Whitehand, J.W.R. (2012) ‘Issues in urban morphology’, Urban Morphology 16.1, 55-65. Renfrew, C., Bahn, P. (eds.) (2013) Archaeology: The Key Concepts, (London, Routledge). Charalambous, N., Geddes, I. (2015) ‘Making Spatial Sense of Historical Social Data’, Journal of Space Syntax 6.1, 81-101. Strappa, G., Carlotti, P., Camiz, A. (2016) Urban Morphology and Historical Fabrics. Contemporary design of small towns in Latium (Gangemi, Roma).

In ancient written sources earthquakes were mostly interpreted as a divine punishment for human sins, only few authors instead interpreted the seismic event as a phenomenon independent from human actions. Considering the built architectures as material documents, several examples can be found, suggesting that there was an empyrical knowledge of the consequences of earthquakes on buildings. Modern literature on the topic, mostly within engineering studies, lacking an historical approach, assumes that in ancient times science ignored the physical nature of seismic events and consequently declares that architects couldn’t consider dynamics in their projects. The close examination of some examples shows clearly that Roman, Islamic and Medieval architects had an empirical knowledge of dynamics, probably based on post-seismic reconstruction. This knowledge developed through history, so it is possible to outline a history of seismic design way before the Lisbon earthquake (1775), considered by many authors as the beginning of the history of seismic design.

Processual design: Torre Rinalda, Lecce, Italy (XVI cent.)

In the Middle Ages a chain suspended between two towers defended the entrance of Kyrenia’s little harbour, like the chain across the Golden Horn in Constantinople. William de Oldenburg, who visited Cyprus in 1211 during the reign of King Hugh I, referred to Kyrenia as “a small town well-fortified, which has a castle with walls and towers”. He perceived the chain tower as part of Kyrenia’s fortification system in that time. The Byzantines had already fortified the city, but in the thirteenth century, during the Longobard war, before the siege of the city, Frederick II’s party, under the direction of Captain Philippo Genardo, improved the defences of the city. The chain tower is still visible today in the north side of the old Kyrenia harbour. It consists of an 8,15 m diameter cylindrical tower and a 1,5 m diameter pillar on top of it. The tower was supporting a chain attached on the other side to another structure. The fortifications on the north side terminated against the harbour in a square tower or bastion holding the chain to be raised and lowered by means of a windlass. The paper includes the digital photogrammetric survey of the chain tower using a structure from motion software, the historical research and the comparison with other coeval harbour defence constructions of the eastern Mediterranean.

This study aims to illustrate the formation of the urban tissue over the Roman theatre in the walled core of Zaragoza. Within the scope of the study, the typological plan of the city was prepared using the building surveys taken in 1911, and the plan was interpreted as a historical organism. The basic types in the city are determined, and methods of the process-based typology are used to reveal the formation process of a selected urban tissue that is an example of the rebasification of a specialized building. In this example, a Roman theatre was repurposed as a foundation for constructing residential buildings and affected the formation process of the urban block until its discovery.