Amman: Jordanian Identity after Modenrism

The Municipality of Greater Amman sought from the early 1950s to frame Amman as the Modern City of the Middle East. To reach such a goal, they instated five urban planning commissions over the course of fifty years. The base of all five plans was laid out in 1955 by Max Lock and Gerald King, two British planners, to produce urban plans and guidelines on how the city should expand, build new structures, and a site plan for Lock’s Civic Center. The following master plans reorganized the same components of the civic center while ignoring the neighboring demographic. The establishment of institutional buildings in the middle of a dense, low-income neighborhood has left the site sterile and unused. The relocation of the Friday market, from its original site to a smaller and less accessible site, was the most recent addition to the site. My thesis proposes the placement of the National Library, the last unbuilt component from the 1955 master plan, on the same site as the Friday Market.