The book speaks about the Mediterranean city, about the composite urban structure of Tripoli. It recounts the conditions of fragility common to so many other cities of the Mediterranean. It speaks of strategies of survival implemented to deal with these conditions. It speaks of contaminations, so evident in the urban history of this Libyan city: contaminations between conflicting languages, styles and social groups. More than many other cities, Tripoli was a hub of trade, of mixtures and the 'unusual openness of homes with balconies and windows' reveals to the extent of the transgressions to the Arabic-Islamist code, even considering the reciprocal 'agreement' of cooperation between the urban morphology and the typology of settlement the author describes. The book also confronts the world of design. The transformation of the city to a metropolitan and global dimension creates a significant break with the slow sedimentation of the urban fabrics of the past. Yet at the same time it also opens up toward the scale of the landscape and geography. The vast void of the desert behind it, and the sea in front of it, are once again the elements to be confronted.
There is almost a recreation of a primal condition that, while it moves beyond history, approaches the archetype