The closing meeting of the project “Urban Heritage and Traditional Building Skills in Southern Mediterranean Countries” took place on June 5 and 6 at the Casa Árabe in Córdoba. The meeting brought together international experts in the field and representatives of public administrations, organizations and professional associations from Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia.
The meeting was organized with the collaboration of the AECID, the FIIAPP and Casa Árabe in order to close the aforementioned project, which is the result of the collaboration of the Union for the Mediterranean, UNESCO and the Ministries of Housing and/or Culture of Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia, and which was made possible thanks to funding from GIZ and technical support from the Traditional Building Cultures Foundation.
This project, which began with an inaugural meeting in Barcelona in the summer of 2023 and continued with a series of national workshops in Tunis, Ouarzazate (Morocco), Timimoun and Adrar (Algeria), and Nouakchott (Mauritania), aimed to exchange knowledge and identify and promote best practices in the protection, conservation, awareness, promotion, and dissemination of traditional building, architecture, and urbanism knowledge. This initiative aimed to highlight the importance of such knowledge not only to preserve the unique culture of each region but also to ensure that new buildings and urban developments help keep it alive. Additionally, it sought to achieve more sustainable and durable construction and design models, better adapted to local climate and resources. The project also focused on utilizing local trades to generate quality employment and support the local economy.
The meeting in Córdoba aimed to gather participants from each of the national workshops to share and exchange objectives and future proposals. Interesting discussions were held and various ways were proposed to continue working in this area, as well as to promote collaboration between the various public administrations, professionals and institutions that took part in the process.
