Process Typology and Formative Processes of Middle Eastern Urban Open Spaces

Studies based on process typology allow us an almost complete understanding of the physical realities of the cities and surrounding areas. These studies - following the urban research methodology developed in Italy since the 1960s by S. Muratori - are based on the identification of the elements of the urban morphology (continuity of routes; convergence of routes towards urban nodalities such as gates, bridges and public buildings; regularity of the urban fabric and size of the blocks of houses; presence of housing around specialized buildings denoting a synchronic construction process; traces of ancient walls; presence of cemeteries defining expansion phases; bypass routes indicating the presence of obstacles or limits) make readable those typical behaviours of fabrics and types in relation to a specific urban organization that allow to spot the traces of the main phases of formation of the building fabric over time. Urban studies based on process typology start from the hypothesis that the history of a city is “written” within its building fabric and that every urban structure is inseparable from that of the territorial organism within which it is located. Therefore it is possible to “read” the different phases of construction of a city within the structure of its building fabric by resolving it into its components and classifying it according to the various development stages, in order to identify all the moments in the process that determined its form and structure. Such “reading” turnes out to be necessary due to the lack of historical-archaeological data (which would be helpful in tracing the different phases of formation of the city and of its building fabric over time) and of literature about the structure of residential building fabrics in their phases of formation and transformation. For these reasons, in order to retrace the different forms of the urban fabric of cities through time, we rely on the tool of process typology and on the identification of some forms “readable” in the building fabric. These forms can be associated, by means of logical and typological reasoning, to the various historical phases of evolution and contraction of a city urban structure. The aim of this paper is to apply this research metodology to some Middle Eastern cities such as Damascus, Aleppo and Hama to find out the main phases of formation and transformation of their urban fabric. A project of urban renovation shall start from this reading and be in continuity with the process.