We got so much international attention when we wrote about the Iraqi mudhouse called a mudhif built with US veterans and Iraqi refugees in the US. You can read the story here. Vernacular architecture is that built without a plan by local people is taking the world by storm as people consciously and subconsciously are drawn to simpler times when design was functional and from materials that nature made.
The proof is in the pudding at Dubai Design Week where a designer from Kuwait, with Mesopotamian origins, recreates an Iraqi or Mesopotamian mudhouse. Don’t you feel like you’d like to step inside?
In the US they were constructed of phragmites, an invasive reed grass, and built on the grounds of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Northwest Philadelphia.
Ola Znad, the designer, turns the traditional gathering place for Marsh Arab communities into a multi-sensory experience. The buildings were designed, of course, for centuries before without any one person taking claim. She says they were crafted in Iraq from locally sourced reeds and mud: the materials that have supported Marsh Arab communities for generations.
According to the paper The Ecology of the Mudhif, the mudhif was built and used, by the Marsh Arabs of the region, until 1993 when Saddam Hussein began to drain and dam the marshes, in an attempt to destroy the life and culture of those Arabs. But after his defeat 10 years later in 2003, the Arabs dug up his dykes, canals and damns, re-flooded the marshes and began to resume their ancient way of life.
Inherently nomadic, the author muses: “the prejudice against a fixed life is strong, only the lowest of the tribe will condescend to remain stationary; but change is in progress.”
Related: What is Vernacular Architecture
The paper notes that mudhifs were built by the culture which not only developed the world’s first cities, with their great mud-brick ziggurats and temples; it also invented writing, for the keeping of temple records. And of course, for sustenance, the cities had to be surrounded by agricultural villages hence, in the marshes, buildings constructed entirely of reeds. Is this why our pull toward them is strong?
Related: read about the origins of writing in Iraq
By portraying the Mudhif as an open and inclusive space, Znad says she “reflects the traditional architecture of the Marsh Arabs and emphasizes the contemporary need for sustainable design.”
This is true in every culture everywhere especially the UAE which has designed itself out of the desert from scratch over the last 50 years. It may be why cardboard was also featured this year. We are all going back to the basics.
Enjoy the photos and if you are at the Dubai Design Week this week drop us a line.
