Bioclimatic values in the rehabilitation of Traditional Mediterranean Architecture

The traditional architecture we find in the Mediterranean basin continues to be of an extraordinary richness. It is the product and the reflection of societies accustomed to intense interchange, and it has taken form slowly precisely thanks to these interchanges. It is however important to point out immediately that it is a disappearing architectural form, because it was produced on the basis of a logic that we call pre-industrial, when things happened slowly, when the shapes of architecture were distilled with the passing generations and when know-how was handed down from father to son in families of builders (known as master builders, maalem in Arabic). The societies living in the Mediterranean have changed radically since the arrival of the phenomenon of industrialization, now refined for the umpteenth time in the form of globalization. The communities that built and dwelt in this architecture have disappeared or are breaking down, and other logics are now at play (migration, second homes, creation of ghettos, gentrification, fall in property value leading to replacement by new buildings, etc.).1 Sometimes, our romantic, melancholic view prevents our seeing that its inhabitants have to be able to transform it in order to adapt it to the needs and aspirations of the present day. In this article we will attempt to present the richness in bioclimatic terms of this architecture and to reflect on the possibilities of rehabilitating it to make the most of its huge potential, with all the respect it deserves.