Building back home and dignity can work with local, sustainable materials

Somalia faces one of the world’s most persistent displacement crises, with millions uprooted by conflict, drought, and climate-driven instability. As emergency camps grow into semi-permanent settlements, the need for long-term, affordable, and culturally grounded housing becomes urgent. A new proposal, Shelters of the Future, offers precisely that: a mud-brick modular framework rooted in Somali building traditions yet designed for resilience, dignity, and community.

Developed by designer Rabie Al Ashi in Saudi Arabia in collaboration with Kengo Kuma & Associates, Shelters of the Future won first prize in an international competition led by Somalia’s Ministry of Public Works, Reconstruction and Housing (MoPWRH), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and Young Architects Competition (YAC). It stands out for its elegant simplicity: a shelter system that relies on local materials, local skills, and local cultural logic.

With so much goodwill going into designing new refugee shelters from the western world –– see our 2014 article on refugee shelters from IKEA and designers in Jordan, we are still seeing Gazans and Somalis living under tarps.

Read our article: Refugee shelters we hate to love

Still, we celebrate ideas and appreciate this design because it works with vernacular materials and takes into account the local.

At the heart of the design is a flexible 4×4-meter module, a human-scaled unit pairing two enclosed rooms with a semi-open central space and a private garden. This small footprint is deceptively powerful: it gives each household privacy, a safe outdoor space, and the ability to arrange interior life according to Somali social norms. The module becomes a building block—units can be combined into courtyards, linear clusters, or circular compounds that echo traditional Somali settlement patterns. Compare this to the shelters Somalis have built in Yemen, below.

Materiality grounds the system firmly in place. Structures are built from mud bricks, acacia logs, palm leaves, and earth-based plasters—materials that are renewable, inexpensive, and readily available. Mud bricks in particular offer thermal mass, keeping interiors cooler during the day and warmer at night, an essential feature in Somalia’s hot, arid climate.

Construction is intentionally low-tech: shelters can be built by residents themselves, strengthening local craftsmanship and reducing reliance on imported humanitarian products that often fail in desert climates.

The design also incorporates passive cooling strategies—cross-ventilation, shaded openings, and breathable walls—to make life more comfortable without the need for electricity. Gender-sensitive layouts support safety and cultural expectations. Small gardens, livestock spaces, and shaded communal zones help rebuild livelihoods and social cohesion.

We’ve spent weeks in Sinai in the simple hushas there made from palm fronds and bamboo. They can be remarkably comfortable even at night when the cold winds blow.

Rather than treating displacement as a temporary emergency, this project is reframed as a human condition requiring stability, community, and dignity. By combining vernacular wisdom with adaptable modular planning, the project offers a model for refugee housing that is scalable, low-carbon, and deeply respectful of local identity.

For Somalia’s displaced families, a mud-brick home may be the most modern solution of all.

::IOM

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Nubian architecture, developed along the Nile River, showcases a harmonious blend of ingenuity, environmental adaptation, and community focus. Rooted in the challenges of a hot and arid climate, this architectural tradition offers timeless principles that remain highly relevant as architects strive to create sustainable, eco-friendly housing and communities today.

The Nubians are an indigenous African ethnic group native to the region along the Nile River, primarily in what is now southern Egypt and northern Sudan. They are one of the oldest civilizations in the world, with a history that dates back thousands of years. They believe in monotheism but some have converted to Christianity over the years.

The foundation of Nubian architecture lies in its use of locally sourced, natural materials. Sun-dried mud bricks, made from Nile silt mixed with clay and straw, provided excellent insulation, regulating indoor temperatures. REadily available palm tree wood and reeds can be used for roofing and reinforcement, while mud or lime-based plaster finished walls, offering durability and a natural aesthetic.

Related: archeologists find pregnant Nubian woman with late-stage fetus stuck in her womb

A hallmark of Nubian construction is the Nubian vault, a technique for creating arched roofs without the need for timber or modern scaffolding. This gravity-based, pressure-stabilized structure was not only resource-efficient but also incredibly durable.

Rounded and domed forms further optimized buildings for thermal comfort, reducing heat absorption and ensuring even cooling. See Hassan Fathy.

Design Principles and Environmental Adaptation

Nubian builders mastered passive cooling techniques long before modern technology. Thick walls and small, strategically placed windows insulated interiors from extreme heat, while buildings were oriented to harness natural ventilation. This design minimized reliance on artificial cooling, making it inherently energy-efficient.

The Nubians also prioritized community-centric layouts. And this is why modern architects like Hassan Fathy thought that this ancient building tradition could solve many problems in Egypt. Homes were arranged around shared courtyards, fostering social interaction and communal living. Resources like water wells and shaded open spaces were shared, reinforcing a sense of collective responsibility and resilience.

Integration with nature was a cornerstone of Nubian architecture. Structures were often built on elevated ground to mitigate flooding, and materials were biodegradable, leaving minimal environmental impact. This synergy with the environment ensured sustainability across generations.

Buildings were often adorned with symbolic patterns and decorations, painted using natural pigments. These artistic touches reflected the community’s cultural identity and spiritual values.

Today there isn’t such a thing as a Nubian territory but you can visit Nubian people in Egypt and Sudan, living in their villages, preserved in time. Want to find a colorful Nubian village to explore? Check out the travel vlog of Kevin and Miranda and get going.

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THE CORD

A personal view by H. Masud Taj, 1980

A flight of wide stone steps. Through the ages its centre has flattened into a ramp. By the side, an ancient structure, the colour of sand, and ahead in the hazy heights the citadel touching the sky.

Turning left into a short lane, dusty and unpaved — urchins playing about in the nine o’clock heat. A little further, a massive wooden door. There is no knocker or bell so I push and it opens rather smoothly.

It is dark and cool. My eyes adjust; I am in a courtyard a Thousand and One Arabian Nights in its details. I call out the name of Hassan Fathy; no one answers. There is an earthen pot in the centre and a low arch opposite. Through it, I emerge into another courtyard, cooler and less dark.

By a stairway sways a slim white cord. I pull. Somewhere above a tinkling sound. Bells. I had heard them all through my travels. In the remote islands of Yugoslavia at the stroke of every hour; the electrically-controlled bells in Ronchamp, France; low octave ones round the neck of Swiss cows, and the usually out-of-tune Big Ben.

I pull again, and again the delicious sound. Yesterday I was in Athens, in the library of Doxiadis leafing through magazines and papers. I came across an article on bricks. It was simple and refreshing. The author was Hassan Fathy. I got his address from the librarian, it was in Cairo. Although Egypt was not on my schedule, I decided on impulse to visit it.

I pull the cord again. Perhaps he isn’t at home, but I decide to linger awhile. There is a serenity about this courtyard which I want to soak in before facing the Cairo outside — chaotic, dusty, exuberant, abounding with life and people.

I pick up a piece of paper and address it to Fathy. I am a student in search of Architecture. I’m here for two days and will be leaving tomorrow evening. I am engrossed in writing and look up to find him next to me. I greet him in Arabic and spontaneously hand over the note. He smiles. Although nearing eighty there is a childlike innocence about him. Immaculately dressed in earthy browns, it is his eyes that impress – dreamy and very expressive. I was wrong about leaving the next evening. I stayed for a month.

THE MUSICALITY

The Garden City is a modern zone in Cairo. On the map, it appears like a tangled mass of rope that some town-planner forgot to pick up. Once inside you lose all sense of direction.

Fathy and I are heading for the Arab League’s Headquarters. “What a mess,” he tells me. “These streets, like the car, are ambiguous — you can hardly tell the front from the rear. For town-planning, look at the trees. See how the main trunk flows into branches, twigs, stems, and veins of the leaf — there is hierarchy and you know where you are.”

He pauses. “Academic training is nonsense, schools turn out student machines with no imagination. It took me ten years to purge myself of it,” he says. Again the leaf, before it joins the twig there is the stem — the stem is the transition; like the musician who moves from the mode to the melody — there is a system of connection. In fact, I’m trying to introduce musicality in the teaching of town-planning in schools. A music composition has more to do with melodies than with scales; likewise, architecture is more to do with space than with shape — it is the space between the walls and not the walls themselves.

Music is important to Fathy; someone told me that he is an able violinist. In the first few days, he said he had difficulty getting accustomed to the musicality of my voice — I suppose he meant my accent. One night after dinner Fathy put a Brahms on the stereo. The western classical was not out of place in the Arab setting. He then sat down and continued to work on a township he was planning around the oasis of El Kharga. He worked late into the night. I watched. I began to understand through his drawing what I had been unable to grasp in his words.

THE GLASS BOWL

We speed towards the ancient city of Alexandria in a black six-seater. Fathy has designed a house there which I think he particularly likes. Perhaps that is why he wants me to see it. We pass a factory, a concrete box squatting uneasily in the desert sand. Fathy looks away — he does not like what he sees, and I understand.

There were certain areas, however, where I tended to disagree with his viewpoint. To give an instance, there are many structures in the West which I have seen and for which I have regard. I like Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel very much and he does not. Fathy also feels strongly about the car. The man behind the wheel, he says, is reduced to a mechanist being.

“But,” I interrupted, “were it not for the car it would have been impossible for us to go all the way to Alexandria to see a house you’ve designed, and return the same day.”

“Not so,” he smiles. “In that case, the house would never have been that far, it would be within a radius of half a day’s walk and then we would be strolling through breezy lanes and trees instead of being confined in a machine for three hours.”

The house; like all Fathy’s houses, is remarkably cool. The mud-brick dome is pierced with round holes that have colored glass panes. When I climb to the top of the dome I find them to be merely colored glass bowls that were fixed inverted, covering the holes. I had seen them being sold in plenty by the street side, in Cairo’s crowded bazaars. From dusty pavements to the top of the dome — such transformations are characteristic of Fathy’s style. The interior of the house is bare. Fathy is asking the caretaker what has happened to all the curtains, tapestries, and carpets. The man gives evasive answers — it is clear that he is behind it all. But Fathy does not accuse, only his eyes show his surprise. He is hurt. And so it has been throughout his life. If it is not the officialdom, it is the petty thief.

When we leave, Fathy asks me what I think of the house. I tell him, also saying that it needed looking after.

“And yet noble,” he adds. When we reach the road, a short distance away, I can no longer see the house. It is hidden by a dune.

THE NICHE

Fathy’s diet is ascetic but he dines like a king. The cutlery is a good example of Turkish silver craftsmanship. The translucent dishes and bowls, I think, are Alexandrian. Chicken broth with breadsticks. Followed by sweetened guavas. And a red sherbet from Sudan made of dried petals. We eat in silence, his cat Mish-mish at our feet. In the wall behind him is a niche with a lamp. The niche is covered by a hinged traditional wooden screen (mushrabeya) which diffuses the light. When he needs more light he simply opens the screen. Next to it is one of Fathy’s miniature paintings.

My eyes are on it while I eat. I find it puzzling. It shows a dome and vaulted building as seen from the front, and yet the courtyard of the same building is as if viewed from the top. Both viewpoints in the same scene. “Is that building in plan or elevation?” I ask Fathy.

He does not like my question. “That is irrelevant,” he says. Through subsequent discussions, I began to understand. A perspective views the world from a particular standpoint and in doing so imposes its own order. Things appear big or small, important or trivial depending on the relative position of the viewer. It is subjective. The miniature painting, on the other hand, is ‘realist’ in the sense that it strives to capture the essence of things and not merely their appearances.

A week later Fathy gives me the keys to his house in Gourna, where I stay for some time before moving in deeper into the Valley of the Dead. There I come across the ramped Temple of Deir El Bahri with a backdrop of a sheer rise of limestone mountains and the intense blue sky above. In its colonnade, I notice a bas-relief. It shows Queen Hatshepsut’s ship as viewed from the side with a row of oarsmen dipping their oars in the water which with its variety of fish swimming in it all shown as if viewed from above. Both viewpoints in the same continuous scene.

THE TWILIGHT

It is one of my last meetings with Fathy, and he is rather silent. The sun begins to set. “Come,” he says, “I shall show you my piece of sky.” The sight from his terrace is stunning. The house is at a height and we stand level with the top of the gigantic ancient mosques. The sun’s rays are bursting from behind a minaret.

“The Earth must meet the Sky,” he says, “the body with the soul. Look at the crestings running upon the length of the wall. The shape of their Earth-mass is a replica of the shape of the sky-void between them. The shape itself is that of a tri-foil lily (brides of the sky’ the Arabs call them). With the cresting, the contact is made on an individual level, with the minaret it is on a community level.”

The sky was now a spreading red, the silhouette of the mosques and minarets stood defined dark and powerful. “See how the minaret accelerates your vision upwards. It is divided into sections that rhythmically shorten the higher you go, like an accelerando in music. And the sections keep getting narrower and their shapes also change — from square to octagonal to cylindrical, adding to the acceleration.”

Fathy talked on till twilight merged into darkness and the stars gathered their intensity.

A personal view by H. Masud Taj, 1980, Inside Outside Magazine. Reprinted with permission. 

H Masud Taj is an award winning adjunct professor at Azreili School of Architecture & Urbanism with both his studios and seminars being premised on the ethics of alterity. His lecture courses at Carleton’s Centre for Initiatives in Education are on topics of Muslim Civilizations. He delivered the Keynote Address on the Ka’aba at the 2nd International Conference of Islamic Art and Architecture, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi and was the series’ invited speaker in Lahore and Isfahan (he has since circumnavigated the globe on a lecture-tour). He has delivered annual talks on the occasion of the Islamic History Month Canada (2017-2021); including a cross-cultural reading of Leonardo da Vinci in a triad series during Carleton University’s Cinquecento Celebration. His involvement with the ‘other’ extends to animals: his book Alphabestiary (with exegesis by Bruce Meyer) featured at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto 2011.

His post-professional dissertation analyzed insightful moments of “the other ” in scholarship, chess, films and architecture via the oeuvre of Stanley Kubrick. As an architect licensed in India, he was mentored by the visionary Hassan Fathy in Egypt, and as a calligrapher by the Italic master David Hosbrough. His book on Nari Gandhi (2009) apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright, is archived in MacOdrum Library’s Special Collections while his intercultural and interdisciplinary tri-lingual book Embassy of Liminal Spaces (2009), that synthesized his poetry, calligraphy and architecture, is a permanent installation at Canadian Chancery in Bangalore, India and inducted into the Library of Parliament, Canada.

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Getty Conservation Institute partners with Department of Culture and Tourism-Abu Dhabi to teach conservation best practices

Local and international experts will gather in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates and Nizwa, Oman from October 22 to November 19, 2022 for the International Course on the Conservation of Earthen Architecture. This follows a similar and recent course on mosaic restoration.

This one-month training course will use Al Ain, UAE as an open-air laboratory for participants to learn practical, hands-on methods for preserving earthen buildings and archaeological sites. On a study trip to Oman, participants will carry out an exercise on the conservation of urban settlements made of earth in Nizwa’s al Aqr neighborhood, an ancient, fortified city built with earthen bricks.

Earthen Architecture Course topics include:

• Conservation theory and principles
• Laboratory and field analysis of earthen materials
• Earth as a building material—use and construction techniques
• Mechanisms of decay—material and structural
• Methods of recording for documentation and analysis
• Conservation methodology—Planning of conservation and rehabilitation interventions
• Practical conservation methods—structural and non-structural
• Conservation of earthen archaeological sites and decorative surfaces
• Maintenance and preventive conservation
• Developing rehabilitation and adaptive re-use projects for earthen buildings

A study trip to Oman where participants will carry out an exercise on the conservation of urban settlements made of earth (Manah village, near Nizwa, Oman)

A four-story castle made from mud and sand

Earthen architecture is one of the oldest and most widespread building types in the world. Despite its long history, however, it faces many threats to its preservation. It’s also not earthquake proof.

In the Middle East and North Africa region, earthen buildings are under threat from a variety of factors including abandonment and population displacement, earthquakes, and climate change.

Unreinforced buildings made of earth can be extremely vulnerable to earthquakes, subject to weakening and even collapse, especially if they are poorly maintained. Similarly, climate change and erratic weather events such as monsoons and floods are especially destructive to earthen structures and settlements.

Located in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, Al Ain is known as the “Garden City” of the United Arab Emirates. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site with a 5,000-year history of settlement in oases, archaeological sites and buildings constructed with earth.

Sites that will be visited by participants include Al Jimi and Al Qattara Oases and Hili Archaeological Park.

“Al Ain is the ideal setting for the earthen architecture course because of its rich heritage, central location in the region, and the expertise of DCT Abu Dhabi in heritage management and conservation,” said Susan Macdonald, head of Building and Sites at the Getty Conservation Institute. “Participants will gain theoretical and technical experience needed to preserve their home country’s earthen heritage.”

Yemen’s mud city of skyscrapers

Yemen, for instance, is home to one of the most impressive, one of the oldest and also one of the tallest mud cities in the world. Before the city scrapers of New York, the city of Shibam had built high rise apartments out of mud which tower to over 100 feet and are between 5 and 11 storeys high.

Dating back to around the 2nd century CE, the city was built using local clay and is still home to around 7,000 residents who live in the fortified city.

Although it is over 2,000 years old, rain and erosion necessitates constant maintenance, which efforts are now supported by restoration and urban development programmes. Nicknamed Manhattan of the Desert, the city is testament to the durability of mud not just for single structures but also for modern high-rise living.

While attendance for this class is now closed, be in touch with the Getty Institute to learn about future earth architecture opportunities. If you want more inspiration from the Middle East, see more on Iran’s Nader Khalili, and earth architect Hassan Fathy. If you are in the United States, learn more about local straw building through Bill and Athena Steen. I had the pleasure of staying with them for a week about 20 years ago. Their strawbale building projects at Canelo are still going strong. And are more relevant than ever.

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Hassan Fathy, author of Earth & Utopia is the Middle East’s father of sustainable architecture. Before it was fashionable or even fathomable, he was championing earth architecture in the hopes of bringing decent housing to Egypt’s impoverished masses. Using mud and other natural resources, he wanted to liberate Egyptians from the ‘concrete matchboxes’ that they lived in the crowded and bustling cities and give them spacious, earthen homes they could be proud of. He came from a wealthy family but wanted more for Egyptian society. 

Fathy also brought a new found respect to age-old (and sustainable) architectural techniques that were still in use by Egypt’s poorest to build homes. His world-famous book ‘Architecture for the Poor‘ extolled the virtues of vernacular architecture and the skills and knowledge that the poor possessed. But what happened to his model village ‘New Gourna’ that was built in the forties?

Well, years later the model village is falling into serious disrepair. Buildings are crumbling and others have disappeared completely or have been changed beyond all recognition. But for all its fault those will live there are proud of their village and are desperate to see it repaired. In 2010, the World Monument Fund visited the village to survey the damage. As well as producing a stunning little video they documented all the repairs that would be needed to restore the village to its former glory.

What’s happened since then isn’t so clear. I got in touch with the WMF to find what the future holds for New Gourna. Erica Avrami, who is director of Research and Education at WMF explained: “We would very much like to follow-up on this work, and UNESCO – who is our institutional partner for New Gourna efforts and the lead organization in its preservation – has been working with the government bodies in Egypt to get approval for the project’s continuation.”

World Monument Fund – “I Wish I Had Better News To Convey…”

“Unfortunately, due to the political situation and the many changes in ministry leadership that have occurred over the past year, this has proven difficult. At present, we are in limbo as we await these permissions. I do wish that I had better news to convey with regard to our work at New Gourna.”

It’s a shame that the project hasn’t lead to more concrete action so far. Yes the instability of the region is a huge and understandable stumbling block but New Gourna represents so much of what is creative, innovative and great about Egypt that I hope it remains a priority to see it restored. As the seasons pass and erode away at the earthen walls of Hassan Fathy’s model village, I also hope that the restoration happens before it’s too late.

For inspiration I highly recommend Fathy’s book Earth and Utopia which you can buy here. Or Hassan Fathy, An Architectural Life (links to Amazon).

The leading editorial review sums it up:

“Hassan Fathy is Egypt’s best-known 20th-century architect. He was also a man of contradictions. He came from a wealthy background and had a western-style training. Yet he embraced traditional, vernacular forms, techniques, and materials and throughout his career promoted their use as part of a campaign to improve the conditions of Egypt’s rural poor.

“Earth & Utopia chronicles this lifelong commitment through personal interviews conducted by the author, photographs, and drawings from the Hassan Fathy archives, and Fathy’s own writings on the subject, many of which are published for the first time. This beautiful, fascinating, and scholarly book will be essential reading for students, academics, and general readers interested in Fathy, and the development of Arab and vernacular architecture, earth construction, architecture for the poor, and sustainability.”

For more on Fathy and Gourna see:
Remembering Hassan Fathy – Egypt’s Green Architect Of the People
Hassan Fathy is the Middle East’s Father of Sustainable Architecture
13 Principles of Sustainable Architecture

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Exactly forty years ago, Hassan Fathy published his groundbreaking book on community-inspired mud architecture in Egypt. To mark his book’s 40^th anniversary and commemorate his green legacy, we spoke to Salma Samar Damluji who worked with Fathy in Cairo in 1975 and now helps preserve mud architecture in Yemen.

Hassan Fathy was an Egyptian architect who wanted to build a different world using the cheapest material the earth provides – mud. When in 1946 he was commissioned to build a new village in Luxor, he did something which many architects at the time wouldn’t even contemplate. He asked the community what they wanted and integrated the best of their traditional earthen construction techniques with his architectural expertise. What emerged was ‘New Gourna’, a stunning earthen village with natural ventilation, large bright rooms, beautiful domes – and all at low cost too.

In 1972 he published ‘To Build With The People’, a book on this experience as well as his commitment to work with the poorest people in Egypt to secure their right to decent housing. A year later his book was republished by the University of Chicago Press under the new title ‘Architecture For The Poor’ where it triggered a wider international interest in his work and ideas. Hassan Fathy died in his home in Cairo on November 30^th 1989. To mark his book’s 40^th anniversary, I spoke to award-winning Iraqi architect Salma Samar Damluji who worked with Hassan Fathy in 1975-6 & 1984-5 and now helps preserve mud and stone architecture in Yemen.

I understand that you were ready to end your architecture studies until you came across Hassan Fathy’s work. Is that true?

Well, yes there was a brief stint when I was home [Beirut] from my studies over the summer when I wanted to quit. And I was thinking how am I going to tell my parents, after all the money that they spent sending me to the UK to study at the most expensive school of architecture? I was wanting to break this news to them when I bumped into Hassan Fathy and that changed everything.

What was it about Hassan Fathy and his architecture that fascinated you and drew back into architecture?

I think he was the first person that made me understand that Islamic architecture and vernacular architecture isn’t history. That it can be part of the present and that vernacular architecture can be developed and is an important resource particularly to people who are deprived. It created a more dignified and luxurious space for them to live than concrete matchboxes (as they call them in Cairo) that were the alternative.

Fathy’s premise was that the peasants – the falaheen – who were the rural people could teach us a lot about living well. They used to live in four/five rooms with a patio and a kitchen and a bathroom, a backroom and a shed for the livestock. But soon as the government and the bureaucracy took over housing them, they were transferred into one/two rooms in horrid multi-store buildings. So this is what he was fighting and he learnt a lot from the rural housing of Nubia and upper egypt, and from the master builders and stonemasons who worked with him.

Why do you think Hassan Fathy had such a big influence in the field of architecture in the Middle East and in vernacular (earth) architecture worldwide?

Hasan Fathy has not had a big influence on the architecture in the middle east. In fact the middle east with its bureaucracy (and contractors) has been busy constructing for profit, without any proper design, planning or thinking, and (apart from a few numbered private clients) there was no real interest in Hasan Fathy’s ideas in the region. I am not sure much has changed there since.

He was the first Arab architect (there was another French architect and a British architect who worked with vernacular architecture in Algiers and in upper Egypt) to bring to the forefront and to the contemporary if you like the importance of earth architecture. He recognised its importance across history from the pre-Islamic era to the present day. He was that astute that he could recognise the fact that in the past, people used to know how to build much better than the kind of destructive construction that has taken over now.

He was also one of the first fighters against the recolonisation of architecture which you see today. He wanted to preserve Egypt’s architectural heritage and save it from concrete. He fought relentlessly and so did we alongside him to stop the expansion of imported ideas, imported architecture and the thinking that came with it.

What was it like to work with Fathy and what was he like as a person?

I first went to work with Fathy in 1974-1975, on my year out at the AA (School of Architecture) in London. It was one of the beautiful periods of my life, and I still look back at it with great fondness. I still miss him to this day. He was a delightful person to be and work with, erudite, gentle and terribly entertaining. He was completely pre-occupied with the projects he was working on, and the cause, the importance of Islamic and vernacular architecture and culture, and housing the poor.

I was completely engaged in taking up my role as assistant, student and companion. He was a wonderful tutor and mentor. I don’t recall a dull or boring moment. We always had so much to do. Designing, drawing (drafting), writing, putting together documents, helping him prepare his slides at the very last minute before he left on a trip abroad…And there was the essential listening to Brahms when there were no guests, or after they had all gone or when he was feeling lonely and dejected he brought his violin out.

As close as his heart was to rural and urban Egypt, his concerns where equally universal, and regional. Fathy redefined spaces, features, pavements and walls in a refreshing architectural language, while being outspoken and critical of the bureaucracy, corruption and condition (squalor, neglect and dilapidation) of the run down urban environment of old Cairo’s buildings, (this was prior to the later conservation projects of the Aga Khan Historic Cities programme). He lifted Islamic architecture out of the orientalist, museum and archaeological status it had acquired (after the Ottoman neo-classicist and colonial architecture era, 19th C. onwards), to a living architecture and town planning to be taken up in Architecture departments, and Arab universities. He was a revolutionary and that explains why working with him was so important and compelling for me at the time. However, his battles are now our battles.

For more on Hassan Fathy and green architecture see:
Hassan Fathy is The Middle East’s Father of Sustainable Architecture
Mud Structures of the Muslim World: Spectacular and Sustainable
13 Principles of Sustainable Architecture

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Award-winning architect Salma Samar Damluji speaks to GreenProphet about her mud architecture work in Yemen and why Dubai’s property development mentality is ruining the Middle East

The Middle East may be a fascinating place politically but architecturally, it’s on its last legs. Years of corruption and poor governance mean it’s slowly becoming one of the ugliest places on earth. You just need look at at the sprawling mess of glass and metal in Dubai to realise that something has gone awry. Salma Samar Damluji, an Iraqi architect of 30 years says that greed and corruption is behind the fall of architecture and insists that this money rush is destroying the region’s architectural heritage one building at a time.

And no-one knows this more than Damluji. She has fought what she calls architectural recolonisation in Egypt alongside Hassan Fathy who championed mud architecture practiced by the falaheen (rural peasants) in the 197os. And she’s also worked in Yemen restoring and renovating eco-friendly mud buildings in Yemen’s Wadi Hadramout where ancient building can disappear over night.

“In Europe, countries have been able to preserve their own culture, architecture and urban heritage but the rest of the Arab world hasn’t done that,” explains Damluji. “So as a result they have no architectural heritage left – everybody is imitating Dubai which is a complete disaster. Unfortunately you see the result of it now all across the Arab region.”

One country that Damluji believes has been able to hold back the mass commercialisation of architecture is Yemen. “When I first went in 1981, there was a kingdom of architecture and there was a huge rich resource of architectural heritage. Yemen, I felt, was the last place in the Arab world that had this incredible civilisation and urban heritage that had been going on for hundreds of years. They were so developed that they were creating these amazing palaces out of mud – very modern too. I felt that there was a cause there and I felt I had to take on that cause.”

She has been visiting Yemen ever since and from 2005, the Daw‘an Mud Brick Architecture Foundation has supported her work to restore buildings in Wadi Hadramout. Another important institution has been the Cultural Emergency Response (CER) of the The Prince Claus Fund in Netherlands, which funded restoration projects in ‘Aynat and Sah following a destructive flood in the region in 2008.

Damluji’s effort to protect and preserve the mud architecture of Yemen, however, hasn’t been easy. Civil war, political in-fighting and badly mismanaged resources mean she’s had to rely on outside support to carry out any restoration and she also has to take on other projects just to make a living. And it isn’t getting any easier.

“It’s harder now than it used to be to work in Yemen as a woman because there are more people in Hadramout who are more… I wouldn’t say fundamentalist. There is a worse level of education and people are taking the girls out of school at the age of 12 to get them married and people rely on money that comes from relatives living in Saudi and the Gulf.”

“So, things are difficult but there is still an architectural scene for me to engage in and there are all these builders who I adore but the people don’t like dealing with a woman… They think that to become good Muslims they need to do what the Saudi’s do and not talk to women. I think they’ve got the wrong end of the stick.”

Damluji’s hard work maybe challenging but it is being recognised – she was recently named one of the five winners of the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture. The one thing she wants the award to do, however, is bring more attention to the need for architectural restoration in Yemen. She says she is going to be bringing out her begging bowl and say ‘yalla, where’s the money’. “The Yemeni residents give me such a rough time but I think that maybe years down the line people will appreciate the architecture and heritage that I helped preserve.”

When I ask Damluji why architectural heritage is so down the list of priorities in the region, she pauses and replies with one word – greed. “I think it’s all tied up to politics, economics, corruption and how much money people can make from these big construction projects. The amount of money that changes hands during the kind of modern construction is huge and the fact that they annihilate architects from the equation means that developers have complete control over the building.”

Damluji also doesn’t see Masdar as some happy half-way solution. “I don’t know what’s so ecological about constructing in the desert,” she says. “And the other point is that Norman Foster [architectural team behind Masdar] was talking about Hadramout and Shibam in his literature about Masadar but he’s never been to Yemen. I am very cynical about that kind of development … I worked there [UAE] for a couple of years and I know the mentality.”

The things that do keep Damluji motivated and have kept her going back to Yemen for 25 years are the small victories – being able to restore a Sufi dome, conserving an important mosque in Yemen and keeping locals trained in the art of mud-architecture. “I think this thing- restoring architectural heritage – is like a battle and no matter what you do there is always more work to do. So I keep moving.”

: Top photo – Salma Samar Damluji outside Shibam’s gate with a visiting Saudi delegation © Rashid bin Shibraq, Mukalla 2010. 2nd photo – Al Faqih ‘Aynat Mosque in Wadi Hadramut ©SS Damluji, London 2012. Photo of Salma Damluji in Geneva via ©Aydan Balamir, 2007. Final photo – worker applying white wash to the ceilings of newly constructed bathroom at Nasir Ba Surrah’s house in Masna‘at ‘Urah, Daw‘an ©SS Damluji, London 2011.

For more on  mud architecture see: 
Iraqi Mud Architect Wins Prestigious Sustainability Award
Yemen’s ‘Manhattan of the Desert’ Boasts 400 Habitable Clay Towers
Hasan Fathy is the Middle East’s Father of Sustainable Architecture

The post Iraqi Mud Architect Talks Sustainability and Corruption in the Middle East (Exclusive Interview) appeared first on Green Prophet.

Iraqi architect Salma Samar Damluji has won the ‘Global Award for Sustainable Architecture’ for her mud-brick renovation work in Yemen

Mud. Muck. Dirt. Clay. Earth. Call it what you like – it’s the stuff of life and also of sustainable architecture. From the stunning mud mosque of Djenne in Mali to the clay tower homes of Yemen, earth architecture has been used to create some stunning and sustainable buildings. Indeed, Iraqi architect Salma Samar Damluji has just been awarded the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture for helping to renovate the mud built towns of Hadramut in Yemen.

The fact Damluji has won this important architecture award is all the more ironic when you consider that she almost never became an architect at all. A couple of years into her architecture studies in London, she was bored and on the verge of quitting. By complete chance she stumbled across Hassan Fathy’s book about his earth-inspired architecture work at Gourna. “I suddenly discovered that I had been studying the wrong type of architecture,” she explains.

Damluji decided to finish her studies and focused on mud architecture. In 1975 she left to work with Hassan Fathy in Cairo and she began teaching Islamic Art and Architecture in Lebanon. In 1980 she joined the UN and was posted to Yemen where she became fascinated by the mud fortresses of Hadramut.

Once the last reserve of mud brick architecture, conflict and economic decline meant that many in Hadramut abandoned their sculpted homes to the wilderness in the 1990s. “I was the first “architect” per se to set my eyes on these sites,” she explains in an interview. “So I felt I had a very important role, to convey this, study this, institutionalise this and create centres of learning.”

In 2005, Damluji visited Hadramut again and decided to work on renovating and restoring some of the mud-built homes in Wadi Daw’an. To this end Damluji established the Daw’an Mud Brick Architecture Foundation to help renovate these crumbling structures and keep the knowledge around their construction alive. The Foundation surveys villages, palaces and houses to try and save them and to pass on knowledge to architects and students as well as the locals. The simple construction technique involving mud is still used by half the world’s population.

With the help of artisans from the region, the foundation has rebuilt walls, sealed roofs and trained Yemeni students. On its website it states that the landscape of the Wadi is threatened by commercial contractors, and its coherent ecological structure and identity is being eroded. “As a result, the integrity and sustainability of its settlements and landscape is already at risk. Natural resources, skills and agricultural wealth are declining, with a detrimental effect on the economic and historical heritage and future of the region. The Foundation is dedicated to consolidating the urban and cultural wealth of Hadramut and Wadi Daw’an and to sustaining the natural and built environment.”

Whilst the restoration work is always a battle with time, Damluji says it a battle she can’t help fight. She adds that the aim of the project is not to restore the buildings into museums but to enable locals to actually live and work in the semi-abandoned mud villages of Hadramut.

For a detailed breakdown of some of the restoration work see ‘The Restoration of Masjid al-Faqih in ‘Aynat, Wadi Hadramut‘

Top image from Vladimir Melnik @ Shutterstock.com and subsequent photos via First Earth/ David Sheen

For more on earth architecture see:
Hassan Fathy Is The Middle East’s Father of Sustainable Architecture
Mud Structures in the Muslim World: Spectacular and Sustainable
Yemen’s Manhattan of the Desert Boast 400 Habitable Clay Towers

The post Iraqi Mud Architect Wins Prestigious Sustainability Award appeared first on Green Prophet.

A permaculture garden and a mud-brick house, the Dead Sea Harmony Centre in Jordan spreads the word on sustainability

William Alajalian, who was born and raised in the Dead Sea area of Ghor Mazraa, may be new to environmentalism but he is more passionate and pro-active than most campaigners. Around three years ago, his passion to build a garden and host visitors staying in Jordan collided in new ways. “Through hosting different people from different cultures I became more open minded and educated in sustainable solutions and projects,” he explains to Green Prophet. “Every new person gave me a new idea and more energy to keep going.” Three years on and with the support of locals from his neighbourhood, he  has set up an flourishing eco-centre which showcases green methods of growing and water conservation . 

“Coming from a conservative community I did not have much support in my ideas,” admits Alajalian (who is pictured above on the right). “Most people thought it was useless and unnecessary. But what I realised is that to reach the community I had to set an example of my own first. Now we have become a group of people, working together to create an example, a platform with minimum expenses.”

Over the last year, Alajalian and his growing team of volunteers have planted a permaculture garden with a fully-functioning grey-water system which saves at least 50% on water consumption. Plants, flowers, trees and vegetables have been planted and are now growing stronger and faster than ever before.

Permaculture and Earthen Architecture

The Dead Sea Harmony Centre also consists of a stunning mudbrick house inspired by the home that William Alajalian, now 32, grew up in as a child: “It’s cheap, it’s sustainable and good for our environment. You can write a book the advantages of a mudbrick house! Also it is a way to show the locals what they can do with their beautiful heritage.” The mudbrick house has two rooms- one used for workshops to teach students and locals about environmental issues and the other which is used to host volunteers helping the centre.

Alajalian wants see more eco-tourists come and experience the biodiversity at Ghor Mazraa and hopes that the centre can play a role in attracting them. The group is also working to establish a sustainable kitchen with solar-powered ovens and fridges to minimise energy consumption. In fact, the centre is keen to make the most of renewable energy resources and would like to see all their electricity generated from solar panels.

“I am trying to save my children’s future… To leave them with good water, good air, good soil”

Indeed, the centre is already sharing the skills it has learnt and was recently asked to design a permaculture garden for a public centre building for disabled people. Alajalian, who is married with two children, explains that they plan to speak at schools, mosques and get more locals involved. They want their message of conservation to be spread near and far so that they region has a chance of being able to deal with the myriad environmental problems it faces.

“Ever since I had my kids I started thinking about the future, the next generation,” states Alajalian. “Basically I am trying to save my children’s future… To leave them with good water, good air, good soil. This is all they need to be alive. That’s the main reason I have decided to start searching sustainable solutions the community.”

How YOU can help:

The Dead Sea Harmony Centre: “To help our project and the others like it around the region we need support not only in the form of donations to these low income villagers but also support from the government, the press, the community leaders (teachers, imams, women, etc) and volunteers. After all, to quote an old African proverb, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

: Images via the Dead Sea Harmony Centre.

For more on green developments in Jordan see:
INTERVIEW: Nadia Lawton Talks About The Green-Silver Bullet Of Permaculture
Go Green With Jordan’s New Generation of Eco-Warriors
Jordan’s Plans For Railway On The Right Track

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How do the Syrian beehive-shaped houses made out of mud manage to stay so cool in extreme desert conditions?

As war and conflict tear through Syria, we take a look at the ancient earthen beehive-shaped houses on the edge of the country which have been wowing visitors for centuries. We have covered these amazing traditional Syrian houses which manage to stay cool in the desert without air conditioning before, but I couldn’t resist showcasing these amazing feats of architecture again. Their iconic shape and eco-friendly architecture is definitely something which needs to be celebrated time and time again.

According to Earth Architecture, half of the world’s population live of work in buildings constructed of earth. So rather than seeing earth architecture as something of the past we must accept that in some way and in some places, earth architecture still rules supreme. Mud, dirt and straw are the oldest building material on the planet as they are widely available, cheap and relatively easy to manipulate and build with.

Other earthen buildings in the Middle East include adobe (mud brick) houses in the Marshes of Iraq, the tallest city of Shibam in Yemen, the city of Bam in Iran as well as the eco-friendly architecture of the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy.

The beehive houses is an ancient dwelling with evidence of its existence going back to 3,700 B.C. There have been recorded examples of their construction in Cyprus and Turkey although it is only in Syria that they have persisted to this day. The Syrian beehive-houses are located on the edge of the Syrian desert with whole beehive villages in Aleppo and are used for storage as well as housing.

It is believed that the conical homes continue to be built in areas of Syria as there are no alternative building materials available which were better suited to the environment. Beehive homes are built using mud bricks which are stacked in a conical shape which allows hot air to travel upwards allowing the ground floor where the residents live to stay cool.

To keep the air cool, these houses rarely have windows which also protects the residents from the desert winds. The conical dome of the beehive houses also allows the rare torrential rains to flow down without exposing the mud to too much water.

All the amazing images are via james.gordon6108/flickr

(In 2023 his stream is offline)

For more on Mud/Earth Architecture see:

Earth Architecture All The Way To Timbuktu

Mud Structures of the Muslim World: Spectacular and Sustainable

Bustan’s Mud Huts With Plasma Screens

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