(by Paola Del Vecchio) (ANSAmed) - MADRID, JUNE 21 - An
effective management tool for assessing cultural heritage: this
is the 'Manual for the Renovation of the City of Dellys', in
Algeria, which has been realised as part of the Montada Project
action programme.The manual will be presented in Algiers on July
9 during a day of debates on subjects around the conservation,
management and enhancement of historical centres and traditional
medina markets. This is the first technical handbook to realised
by the team of Algerian architects working under the guidance of
the head of the Montada project for the city of Dellys,
Lounes Akretche, who produced the manual's sections on
historical architecture and urban evolution. The latter part
contains sub-sections on: the context of the city; the urban
morphology of Dellys; fundamentals and techniques of Kasbah
construction; renovating the architectural heritage of the city
of Dellys.
"Renovation manuals offer architects and local builders the
historical construction know-how for the city and propose best
intervention practices to ensure conservation of the traditional
architecture and to meet current needs," Xavier Casanova, the
book's director and head of the Barcelona-based Montada Project,
told Ansamed."The Dellys handbook summarises the urban and
contruction tradition of the Kasbah that was delapidated by the
2003 earthquake, and offers methods for senstive recovery,
incorporating simple but effective anti-quake systems."
It is a useful methodological reference for integrated
interventions in the area.
Conservation of the architectural heritage of the historic city
centres represents one of the major cultural and socio-economic
challenges facing modern societies.In this instance, experience
gathered on the ground in the area has been condensed into the
renovation guide, making it the key to integrating the various
intervention and to link past urban reactivation processes with
those to come.
The Montada project has set itself the goal of recovering and
safeguarding the traditional architectural heritage of the
Mediterranean in order to save its cultural and historical
identity.The project is part of the Euromed Heritage IV
programme, which has been co-financed by the European Union with
1.5 million euros over three years. The project involves six
Maghreb cities, which are very different urban economic and
cultural areas: Salé and Marrakesh in Morocco, Sousse and
Kairouan in Tunisia and Dellys and Ghardaïa in Algeria.
(ANSAmed)
YK8
