Sidi Bou Sa'id, Tunisia

In 1975 ten senior architecture students and their professor, Besim S. Hakim, spent nine weeks in the village of Sidi Bou SaA'id, Tunisia, carefully studying and analyzing the villageA's physical structure and form. This book, profusely illustrated with original drawings and photographs, is the result of that work. The full significance of this important study is more fully evident now because we have learned much more in recent years about cities and the processes of urbanization that are illuminated by current scientific developments related to the theory of complexity and the processes of emergence. These phenomena can be observed and studied all around us in nature and in social systems including urbanization processes. This book is a contribution that clearly demonstrates how a small village is in fact an outcome of similar processes resulting in a high quality built environment. It has lessons for contemporary and future processes of building and urbanism.