The heroes of Baghdad Arts Deco (Caecilia Pieri, AUC Press, 2011) are unseen and had previously been largely unacknowledged, but they had an indispensable role in the urban regeneration of Baghdad between 1920 and 1950, whose distinctive element was brickwork. Ihsan Fethi, one of the contributors to the book, pays eloquent tribute to the ustas of Baghdad, “the unknown masters of building craft and tradition [whose] historical origins go back thousands of years to the great age of building in Mesopotamia”. Fethi, a professor of architecture and authority on vernacular architecture was formerly chair of Baghdad University School of Architecture. He states: “The Westernization of society, in Iraq as in most other Arab countries, signaled the beginning of the end of the usta…. [The] major upheaval in the socio-economic and technological infrastructure had an obvious and direct impact on traditional building and architecture. The traditional inward-looking courtyard house, whose plan changed little over more than five thousand years, quickly gave way to the outward type. The great building skill of the local ustas continued, however, to show itself in their ingenuity in improvisation and adapting the new technologies to brickwork and its detailing. “Then, during the 1940s and 1950s, with the spread of cement and reinforced concrete and the newly arrived European-trained Iraqi architects and civil engineers, the traditional ustas began to be replaced by contractors… By the 1970s, most had either died or retired. "Very few survive today, and they are almost exclusively engaged in building mosques or historic restoration.” The 1920-1950 buildings that are the subject of Baghdad Arts Deco, stand testament to their mastery of building skills and craftsmanship. Caecilia Pieri's photographs are printed in soft sepia, as if to suggest the pervasive palette of the then urban landscape of Baghdad. However, they were taken between 2003 and 2006 and, while she acknowledges that “our image of Baghdad is indeed distorted by the pain and ugliness of recent history.” this is entirely absent from her photographic portrait, which was first published in French in 2008. Also absent, in the main, are people and the bustle of a city, whose streets appear almost depopulated in these photographs. While some of the buildings are inhabited, many others seem frozen in time. It is not apparent if they waiting for their owners to return or if the inhabitants are safely concealed inside; a sign of the perilous times in Baghdad, which has known the ravages of invasion and occupation for most of its long existence. The author intends that her study “will contribute a fresh vision of a totally unknown city. To impart to others a full understanding of the poignant charm and intensity of Baghdad, as its inhabitants imparted to me through their friendship and trust while helping me to discover, explore, share and love Baghdad… this is far more than an intellectual stance or an aesthetic pleasure: it is a homage I wish to pay to this trust, this friendship, and to this city.” The introductory chapters give the historical, political, cultural and legendary context and the building and craftwork tradition in which the architecturally eclectic urban regeneration of modern Baghdad was to take place. Its defining and unifying characteristic was the cream-coloured brickwork, “a monochrome as old as that of ancient Mesopotamia”. The chapters presenting the main photographs are thematic, starting with ‘Urban perspectives' which includes a panoramic view of the eastern bank of the Tigris showing the still largely preserved horizontal urban landscape of Baghdad. ‘Façades' illustrates both the exuberance and diversity of the buildings' exteriors ranging in the 1930s from a patrician house freely associating neo-Victorian, neo-Ionic and neo-Venetian to a charming and simple middle-class whose brickwork reinterprets a traditional vernacular. In the 1940s façades began to adopt a more functional and stark style and embraced art deco variations. An insight is provided in ‘Roofs, Terraces and Balconies' into the prevalence of the flat roof, encircled by a high parapet in Baghdad, in whose harsh climate the temperature in summer can exceed 50ºC. “All generations, men and women together would spend their nights here for nearly six months, from May to October.” This practice cut across class barriers until the advent of air conditioning, although from the 1930s onwards there was a growing fashion for terrace-balconies on which to sleep out summer nights. The book bursts into colour in its final chapter, in which Caecilia Pieri reveals, “it is the interior spaces of buildings that are clothed in color from floor to ceiling.” On the floors are tiles with their geometric or floral designs echoed in motifs on the ceilings. ‘Baghdad glass' is famous throughout the Middle East and is used to striking effect on the walls of a reception room in a 1940s house. “It is in the inwardness of daily intimacy that one must seek color, hardly any of which seeps outside, for families keep decorative variety to themselves for their own enjoyment.”
