The Reconstruction of Al Nuri Mosque in Mosul: Strategies and Tools for Reinventing the Meaning of Places

The paper reflects on issues deriving from the recent UNESCO competition aimed to the reconstruction of the Al Nuri Mosque, the main mosque in the city of Mosul in Iraq, of which some design proposals will be presented. The theme is not considered in an exclusively responsive manner, but inquires how, in cases of voluntary urban mutilation on such a huge scale, architecture must acquire the ability to abstract from the specific case issues that rise to the themes of the urban and civil identity of the buildings, their identification role, and their representative values; but also how to convey these aspects within the project for the new through formal, figurative and settlement-related solutions. The opportunity provided by the competition was therefore not considered to be exhausted in the presentation of a precise solution for the the specific case, but rather interpreted as an opportunity to articulate a methodological approach to the reconstruction of highly symbolic buildings through experimental and demonstrative practices, which find in the level of typological definition the best compromise between specific exhaustiveness and the capability of being generalised. The main reference for this level of definition comes from the concept of the project-program introduced by Carlo Aymonino, described as a design tool that possesses within itself a planning dimension, which is not limited to the functional data, but also to the planimetric and volumetric ones, being able to be considered a sort of prototype-manifesto of a precise design intention. The exposition of the phases in which the design process was articulated (the study of permanence, both physical and immaterial in their meaning of ruins and absences, the hierarchy of full and empty spaces, the study of urban patterns, etc...) will be, in the conclusions, the occasion for an evaluation of the result not only as a design outcome but also as a methodological path.