Meeting on Traditional building skills in the South Mediterranean region

6 July 2023, Barcelona, Spain – This first meeting of the “Traditional Building Skills in the South Mediterranean Region” program, organized by Union for the Mediterranean (UpM) with the support of GIZ, aims to achieve the valuation and dissemination of vernacular architecture and traditional building materials as a means to increase cultural embeddedness of solutions and climate adaptiveness. It also aims to support activities and projects which promote jobs and skills related to building with traditional materials and traditional techniques for the restoration of the built heritage.

By disseminating and promoting traditional building skills and methodologies, this first meeting, along with the other meetings and activities which will follow during the year, will aim at contributing to identifying and promoting good practices in the invited countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania) in actively using their traditional heritage to maintain the specificity of local identity, as a cultural and economic resource and as a driving force for sustainable development.

The main objectives of this first meeting, which will launch the Programme, are:

• Identifying and spreading ways of promoting traditional building types and techniques and local construction materials suited to the particular conditions of the Mediterranean region concerned (Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia).
• Identifying and spreading ways of fostering and disseminating in the local construction and restoration industry, especially among young practitioners, the environmental, economic, social and cultural virtues of traditional building techniques.
• Promoting the value of heritage and traditional building arts by raising awareness about their viability for the future, the sort of economy they engender and their sustainable character.
• Helping to get across the value of this traditional heritage as a major component in the appeal of tourist destinations, enhancing their potential drivers of local economies.
• Highlighting the way in which this strategy can generate new employment opportunities for young people, giving them the chance to ply and ultimately to master a trade, and fostering opportunities for local business through growth in cultural tourism.
• Identifying limitations and advising on the creation of bylaws and guidelines regulating or promoting the use of building materials and techniques according to criteria of sustainability and accessibility.
• Identifying successful educational programs in the maintenance and promotion of traditional building knowledge and to promote them as a model.