The Medina of Fez as model of settlement for the macro mediterranean area

The presentation analyzes the city fabric of the Medina into Fes and it is divided into two main sections. The first is based on the analysis of generating principles of urban space, on the research into housing density and the relationships between the typology and structure of urban fabric. The second part of the report is based on research into an architectural and urban model that synthesizes the constituent elements of the system under examination. The analysis is conducted, in this case, on a broader theoretical level. The general characteristics of the macro Mediterranean area are taken into consideration to explain a possible model of development for contemporary urban space. With this presentation we want to show how models of settlement considered obsolete and not suited to the demands of the contemporary city are, really, today able to provide concrete answers to a new concept of living in a place. This leads onto the search for space in which elevated housing density doesn't coincide with the marked verticality of the contemporary city and where the use of space occurs along long a horizontal plane. These conditions allow a greater mediation with the forms of landscape and give the opportunity to interpret the city as a compact tectonic crust in which the public and private circles are strongly linked to each other and where the ground and the subsoil actively participate in the development of urban form and her architectural space. In this way the settlement model has also to compare with the needs of the contemporary city. Thus the different needs to move impose the diversification of vehicular and pedestrian thoroughfares. The requirement of technical and infrastructural nets, leads to a stratification of the ground. The need of large commercial, productive, recreational and cultural spaces makes it necessary to work for density and continuity of urban space.