Back to the future: Doxiadis's plans for baghdad

Journal of Planning History

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 3-19

  Pyla, Panayiota ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN   (United States)

Author keywords

Baghdad; Constantinos Doxiadis; Dynapolis; Ekistics; Iraq; modernist urbanism; postcolonial modernization programs

Indexed keywords

EID: 84993748600     PISSN: 15385132     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1538513207304697     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. See Christopher Rand, “The Ekistic World,” The New Yorker, May 11, 1963, 49-87, quotation on 49; and Life, “Busy Remodeler of the World,” October 7, 1966.
2. John Gulick, “Baghdad: Portrait of a City in Physical and Cultural Change,” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 33, no. 4 (1967): 246-55.
3. For a description of Waziriyah and Rusafah, see Gulick, 1967, 250 and 246. See also John Searles, “City Problems Observed in Iraq, Greece, Germany,” The Journal of Housing (March 1959): 91-94; and Floyd Ratchford and Bleeker Marquette, “Tale of Two Countries: Spain, Iraq,” The Journal of Housing (January 1959): 8-12, 18.
4. For the board's funding and activities at the time, see for example, Fahim Qubain, The Reconstruction of Iraq: 1950-1957 (New York: Praeger, 1958), pp. vii and xi; Ihsan Fethi, “ Contemporary Architecture in Baghdad,” Process Architecture (May 1985): 112-32; and Kathleen Langley, The Industrialization of Iraq (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), 81. For a more recent critical discussion of the board's social agenda, see Joseph Siry, “ Wright's Baghdad Opera House and Gammage Auditorium: In Search of Regional Modernity,” Art Bulletin 87 (June 2005): 205-311.
5. Waldo Bowman, “A Modern Mesopotamia is Molded,” Engineering News-Record, (December 12, 1957): 34-54, quotation on 36.
6. The Economist, “Development in Iraq: Special Survey,” CLXXXIII, 5939, June 22, 1957, 14 page supplement after p. 1076. Summary reprinted in Ekistics 5 no. 28 (January 1958): 45-48.
7. For the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development role in Iraq, see International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The Economic Development of Iraq, ( Washington, DC, 1952); and Kadhim Al-Eyd, Oil Revenues and Accelerated Growth (New York: Praeger, 1979).
8. The New Yorker article explained Doxiadis's success as follows: “Doxiadis has the sort of European abilities that are needed—he is up on the latest planning techniques, and he runs his firm with northern (or, ‘western') efficiency—but, being a Greek, he is free of the imperialist stigma.” C. Rand, “The Ekistic World,” 53. Furthermore, Floyd Ratchford, an American development consultant who collaborated with Doxiadis in Iraq, observed that Doxiadis “represents something new on the international ‘technical assistance’ scene.” Floyd Ratchford and Bleeker Marquette, “ Tale of Two Countries: Spain, Iraq,” The Journal of Housing (January 1959): 8-12, 18.
9. For Doxiadis's arguments on the alignments between Ekistics and international development, see for example, Doxiadis, “ Report by C.A. Doxiadis, Expert, Greece,” Mass Housing in Rapidly Developing Tropical and Subtropical Areas, International Council for Building Research Studies and Documentation (Rotterdam, 1959), 1-38, esp. 6-7.
10. Doxiadis, “ The Science of Ekistics,” Arxitektoniki 3, no. 13 (1959): 9-72, quotation on 13.
11. Doxiadis, “ The Rising Tide and the Planner,” Ekistics 7, no. 39 (January 1959 ): 4-10; quotation on 6.
12. Christian Science Monitor, “ Architects Build Modern Baghdad,” Second Section, April 2, 1958. Summary reprinted in Ekistics 5, no. 32 (May 1958): 244-46.
13. Fethi, 1985, 127. For a more recent overview of the modernization of Baghdad at this time, see Nicolai Ouroussoff, “In Search of Baghdad,” Los Angeles Times, December 14-16, 2003.
14. P.W. Macfarlane, “The Plan for Baghdad, the Capital of Iraq,” Housing Review 5 (November-December 1956): 193-95; and Minoprio & Spencely and P.W. Macfarlane, “Plan for Baghdad, Iraq,” in “Architecture in the Middle East,” Raglan Squire, ed., Architectural Design 27 (March 1957): 74-78.
15. Doxiadis Associates, “ The Master Plan of Baghdad,” Monthly Bulletin 9, January 1960. [C. A. Doxiadis Archives] and Doxiadis Associates, “The Housing Program of Iraq,” 1959 (No pages—section on “The Program for Urban Amelioration”).
16. Linear cities were often mentioned in commentaries on Dynapolis. See for example, Llewelyn-Davis, “ Town Design,” The Town Planning Review (October 1966). Doxiadis rejected these associations arguing that the parabolic system of Dynapolis distinguished it from earlier visions. Doxiadis, “On Linear Cities,” Architects’ Yearbook 12 (1968): 49-51.
17. In its later versions, Dynapolis would advance toward one direction alone, but in its first version in Baghdad, growth was two-directional.
18. Doxiadis Associates, “ The Master Plan of Baghdad,” 1960. Doxiadis Associates inserted every city within a grand schema of a global network of cities that was supposed to establish an equilibrium with the earth's natural environment. For a discussion of Doxiadis's vision of a global urban network, see Panayiota Pyla, “ Gray Areas in Green Politics,” Thresholds 14 (Spring 1997): 48-53.
19. See Floyd Ratchford and Bleeker Marquette, “Tale of Two Countries: Spain, Iraq,” The Journal of Housing (January 1959): 8-12, 18; and W. Macfarlane, “ The Plan for Baghdad, the Capital of Iraq,” Housing Review 5 (November-December 1956 ): 193-95.
20. For critiques of other versions of postcolonial urbanism and the politics of modernization, see for example, Vikramaditya Prakash, Chandigarh's Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India ( Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002); James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 1998); and James Holston, The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasília (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
21. “The National Housing Program of Iraq,” Architectoniki 13 (January-February 1959): 42-46.
22. Doxiadis, “ Architecture, Planning and Ekistics: Abstract of the Third Part of a Lecture Series Given at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Spring 1957,” Ekistics 7, no. 42 (April 1959): 293-96.
23. Doxiadis's close colleague, Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, pointed to the pitfalls of New Towns and the advantages of Doxiadis's reinterpretation of neighborhood units in Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, “Outline of Background Paper for Expert Group Meeting on Planning and Development of Satellite and New Towns, 1964,” Harvard Loeb Library Documents. For the broader UN debates on New Towns, see United Nations, Planning of Metropolitan Areas and New Towns (New York, 1967).
24. Doxiadis Associates, “ Iraq Housing Program,” Doxiadis Associates Pamphlet No 5, September 1959 (C. A. Doxiadis Archives).
25. This expectation on behalf of the Iraqi government is repeatedly mentioned in Doxiadis's diaries, which kept a detailed record of his meetings with Iraqi officials—for example, Doxiadis Associates, Iraq Diaries Vol. 1 (1955). [Archive Files 23873, Constantinos Doxiadis Archive]
26. Doxiadis Associates, “Iraq Housing Program, ” 1959.
27. The pitfalls of high-modernist urbanism and its technocratic utopianism are insightfully exposed in Scott, Seeing Like a State, 1998.
28. “Special to The New York Times From Baghdad, Iraq, May 14, 1958,” abstracted in Ekistics 5, no. 33 (June 1958): 280-82; quotation on 281.
29. For an analysis of Fathy's collaboration with Doxiadis in Iraq and elsewhere, see Panayiota Pyla, “Hassan Fathy Revisited: Postwar Discourses on Science, Development, and Vernacular Architecture,” Journal of Architectural Education 60, no. 3 (February 2007): 28-39.
30. “Special to The New York Times From Baghdad,” abstracted in Ekistics 5, no. 33 (June 1958): 280-82, quotation on 280. For other examples of positive reception of Doxiadis's Baghdad project, see B.S. Saini “ Housing in the Hot and Arid Tropics,” Design 5 (August 1961), 18-24; and Ezra Ehrenhrantz and Ogden Tanner, “The Remarkable Dr. Doxiadis,” Architectural Forum 114, no. 5 (May 1961): 112-16.
31. C.A. Doxiadis, “Gossip Square,” in General Reports (December 1956-1957) [Constantinos Doxiadis Archive]
32. See for example, Hassan Fathy, Aris Deimezis, Nikos Kyriou, and A. Marinos, “Thermal Comfort,” Doxiadis Associates R-GA 108, April 15, 1958, 1-2 [Hassan Fathy Archives] and Doxiadis Associates, “ A Regional Development Program for Greater Mussayib, Iraq, 1958,” Ekistics 6, no. 36 (October 1958): 149-86.
33. Gulick, 1967, 252.
34. See for example, Rifat Chadirji, Concepts and Influences: Towards a Regionalized International Architecture, 1952-1978 (London & New York: KPI, 1986).
35. In the 1960s, local firms took a huge volume of work and after the creation of the first school of architecture in Iraq in 1959, the number of local professionals grew dramatically.
36. For current reflections on the reception of the project, see this article on “The Greek Mission in Iraq” [In Greek]: Βασιλική Σιούτη και Πασχάλης Κορωναίος, ↔ Η Εληνική Εκστρατεία στο Ιράκ ~ΕΨιλον 630 (May 4, 2003): 76-82, quotation on 76. A summary of the buildings that were completed appears in Doxiadis Associates, “Progress of the Housing Program, ” Monthly Report 46, Document Prepared for the Government of the Republic of Iraq (Athens, May 1959). Also see Gulick, 1967, 253.
37. For Wright's proposals for Baghdad, see Siry, “Wright's Baghdad Opera House and Gammage Auditorium” and Neil Levine, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). For reflections on Saddam Hussein's interventions in the 1980s, see William Brantley, “ The Search for Baghdad,” Urban Land 63 (2004): 49-55.