MOSUL: SAME STONNES, NEW SOUL

Building back a resilient city

• Broadly planning Mosul City’s reconstruction will prevent social and environmental risks. Indeed the city is exposed to both earthquake and flood hazards. That makes Mosul more vulnerable and requires risk mitigation at an urban scale. Retrofitting the existing damaged buildings is a key step in the reconstruction process. The city should re-emerge from its debris and give life to new constructions. By reusing stones and rubbles from the old city’s debris we commemorate the city’s history.  Evacuation of the debris will help to revitalize the Nineveh district’s economy and launch the rehabilitation of the existing buildings.

• Al-Mouhandisin district is located close to the Tigris River and on both sides of the national road going towards Syria. It is one of the seven main entrances of the city. The establishment of a flood proof urban pattern and an earthquake proof construction system would be relevant. The construction of this district provides an opportunity to experiment on participatory construction training and spread an appropriate construction system while gathering the different communities in collective activities.

• To densify the urban pattern and limit the current suburbanization movement, the houses will be semi-collective 3 floor buildings. Through a pattern of “souk streets” and public squares, it will create a connection between the existing neighborhoods.

• The house’s typology is scalable. It evolves from a minimum sanitary block to a whole housing.

Its organization is inspired from the typical Mosullian living model using buffer spaces to ensure the different levels of privacy.

• Such a development of the city, in a respectful relationship on the one hand between humans and nature and on the other hand between existing and new systems, will lead to the growth while sustaining the current state of the urban and social network.