Shot in the '70s, North African Villages shows medieval villages unchanged by modernity

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North African Villages: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia
by Norman F. Carver
Documan Pr Ltd
1989, 200 pages, 9 x 10.5 x 0.5 inches (softcover)
$24 Buy a copy on Amazon

In the 1970s an architectural student drove a VW van around Italy, the Iberian peninsula, and northern Africa, recording the intact medieval villages still operating in their mountain areas. The hill towns at that time in Italy, Spain, Morocco and Tunisia kept a traditional way of building without architects, using indigenous materials, without straight streets, producing towns of uncommon attractiveness. The architect, Norman Carver, later self published a series of photo books documenting these remote villages which had not yet been interrupted with modernity. They looked, for most purposes, like they looked 1,000 years ago. All of Carters books are worthwhile, but my favorite is North African Villages. Here you get a portrait of not just the timeless architecture, but also a small glimpse of the lives that yielded that harmony of the built upon the born. Its an ideal of organic design, that is, design that is accumulated over time.