The cultural role of the medina of Kairouan and in particular of Place Jraba needs to be strengthened. The interest it excites among the town’s population and the attachment of Kairouan’s inhabitants to the medina are proof that it is an essential component of the identity of their town.
Taking its cultural role into account means safeguarding the relevant characteristics of the historic medina, a space for meeting and festivities—that is, the overall unity of the nucleus of the old town that constitutes its cultural value. It also means safeguarding the architectural characters of its squares, and its historic quarters and their morphology.
Yet the cultural issues must not overlook the fact that it is a living town that plays an important economic and social role, reinforced by its aspiration to be a tourist destination.
Our development and revitalization plan is based on reconciling cultural aspects, in the form of the animation of Place Jraba, with the need for a competitive urban space that offers its consumers equivalent advantages to those they can find elsewhere and forms a node in the tourist circuit, linking the town’s south gateway to the Great Mosque. This is no easy task, because interventions in an old fabric that is full of history are always both delicate and complex.
JRABA Square situation |
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According greater importance to cultural and touristic issues may, then, hinder the square’s adaptation to the needs of modern life. Conversely, prioritizing the aim of revitalizing the square without taking due precautions and measures of control could eventually spoil the square and its immediate environment and ultimately disfigure the built environment that we are seeking to safeguard.
The development and revitalization of Place Jraba therefore has to take into account the aims of improving the built environment, maintaining a characteristic level of activity in a important square in Kairouan’s medina and integrating it into the tourist circuit. In order to achieve these aims, in addition to measures to conserve the built environment, the project to develop Place Jraba must include elements that seek to facilitate transformations that will guarantee the square’s improved integration into both the everyday life of local residents and into the touring circuit of visitors.
PRESENTATION OF PLACE JRABA
Place Jraba is a historic space that used to be a commercial centre containing the shops of weavers, spinners and dyers. In the early 20th century, it underwent development: some shops were demolished and the square was made bigger. It has since become a node that links the main streets in the heart of the medina. The area that is the target of our intervention covers a surface area of 900 m2 and brings together major facilities: a mosque, a health centre, souks, the mosque of the three doors and Moulay Taieb mausoleum. Since 1995, the entire street linking the southern gateway of the medina to the Great Mosque, one of the medina’s major tourist routes, over 800 m in length, was rehabilitated and developed. The façades were cleaned, electricity and telephone networks undergrounded, the streets paved, some houses restored and a system of signposting introduced. Only Place Jraba, despite occupying a position at the heart of the circuit, escaped. Better still, a similar rehabilitation project financed by a loan from the World Bank and focusing on streets around the Great Mosque and the eastern sector of the medina once again overlooked this square due to financial considerations. This illustrates the vitality, the necessity and the urgency of its rehabilitation.
JRABA Square |
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The area turns out to be representative of the medina.
It covers all the types of interventions that may be carried out in the medina, centring on access, activities, refurbishing, housing and the environment.
Based on a general diagnosis of the square and its surroundings, we establish the main problems and then go on to define a development plan that seeks to improve the various aesthetic and functional parameters.
THE REHABILITATION PROJECT
The object of this study of the development of Place Jraba is to suggest to the authorities an operational programme to highlight and develop the square and its immediate surroundings.
The principal tasks are as follows:
- Evaluation of the scope and nature of the problems affecting the square and their level of priority.
- Identification of a series of actions required to respond to the various problems affecting Place Jraba.
- Proposal of a coherent approach for the revitalization of the square.
JRABA Square |
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STRATEGY OF INTERVENTION
The development strategy has to be simple and credible in order to positively influence plans, thereby avoiding the process of degradation that could spoil Place Jraba, and to ensure that it once again becomes an interesting place and a potential space invested with supplementary functions capable of revitalizing it.
It is vital to apply a strategy that includes a number of simultaneous associated actions in the following determinant sectors:
- Increased accessibility, which underlies an improved urban fabric of supply in a pedestrian area by means of the introduction of traffic into the square. This means finding subtle solutions to prevent traffic problems without isolating the square. The combination of these two functions calls for a major technical effort.
- The control and orientation of economic activities, retaining only those that are compatible with the square.
- Improvement to public and environmental services (water, drainage, lighting, domestic refuse collection, etc.).
- The enrichment of the urban domain is one of our prime concerns. One of the actions involves palliating the aesthetic impoverishment of the square and its immediate surroundings. This particular point centres principally on the aesthetic repertoire of architectural elements implemented in the design of urban spaces that should be completed, rather than depleted, by new interventions. None of the interventions must represent an interruption; on the contrary, we will make direct comparisons between the historic situation and the current state. New interventions will be gauged by their integration into the existing structure.
- The conservation of specific examples of heritage by means of restoration, reuse, valorization and rehabilitation of monuments.
- Implementation of signposting for the tourist circuit.
JRABA Square |
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These six themes form the skeleton of the proposed strategy and comprise the programme for the development and revitalization of Place Jraba.
PROPOSED DEVELOPMENTS
The 11 actions to be carried out are:
- Construction of a sabbat (arch-covered street) to confirm the importance of the passage leading to the café and the souks.
- Demolition of the transformer in order to create more space in the square.
- Planting of six palm trees to reinforce the square’s identity.
- Recuperation of the health clinic façade that occupies an important position and gives directly onto the square.
- Attempt to reproduce the layout of tiles, evoking the ceramic tiles of the mihrab of the Sidi Okba Mosque.
- Implementation of a signposting system, with a map indicating the main places to visit with information about the principal monuments in the surrounding area.
- Improvement of the façades of buildings of GF+2 in order to ensure integration.
- Choice of a mineral element or a sculpture evoking the past of the town of Kairouan.
- Construction of a pavement along the south-east and south-west sides of the square.
- Proposal of vertical elements to punctuate the space of the Square, which may serve as supports for appropriate lighting.
- The building situated to the north-east (Zouabi property) requires particular attention. The municipality or the National Heritage Institute may suggest a specific allocation compatible with proposed choices with a view to animating the square.
JRABA Square |
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