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7/2015 - pp 16–27Journal of Comparative Cultural Studies in ArchitectureJCCS-a

Caroline JÄGER-KLEINHisham MORTADA

Cool Relaxation - Traditional architectural design strategies for air ventilation in the west of Saudi Arabia

Erfrischende Entspannung - Traditionelle architektonische Entwurfstrategien zur Luftzirkulation im Westen von Saudi-Arabien

ABSTRACTThe historic building stock of Western Saudi Arabia and its major cultural regions of Hedjaz and Asir, is still relatively unknown. Recently, awareness of this traditional architecture has risen rapidly, leading to the establishment of a joint project being between the Department of Architecture of the College of Environmental Design at the King Abdulaziz Uni-versity in Jeddah and the Department of History of Architecture and Building Archaeology of the Vienna University of Technology. A brief analysis of pre-liminary results of documentation demonstrates the extremely smart design strategies used by this ar-chitectural heritage to deal with the region’s harsh climate.

Three locations were recorded: Al-Ulah, an ancient oasis town of the far north; Jeddah, representing the major urban centers of the Western coast, and Abha in the highlands of Asir, with its scattered farmhouses in its surroundings. Al-Ulah is charac-terized by classical two-story stone atrium houses, attached to each other by their surrounding walls and gathered into an irregular, dense urban fabric with narrow streets typical for the southern edge of the Mediterranean. This building type, in com-bination with the urban fabric, deals with the hot and arid climate of the Northern desert by shading the streets through the surrounding building struc-tures, keeping the cool air of the night within the sunken basin of the courtyard and a very special type of main reception room sitting on top of the cool street, linking the neighbouring houses.By contrast, Jeddah has to cope with the humidity evaporated by the Red Sea in addition to the usual heat of the region and unlike other desert places, cannot count on winds caused by temperature dif-ferences between day and night. So its streets are rather wide and not as irregular as could be ex-pected from the typically oriental city. During the urbanization of the town, from the 17th century up to the late 19th century, there was enough space even within the city walls to provide the houses with a rather generous courtyard, including the double-height niche called an îwân for the outdoor comfort of the inhabitants. A constant but very soft cool breeze from the North floated around the free-standing building volumes of coral stone, directed through the rooms by large, screened windows. When the prospering economy of the late 19th cen-tury forced houseowners to build much higher than the usual two to three floors, to give up the central courtyard and to attach the houses to each other, different means of ventilation had to be found. Now, a balanced relation between very open and totally closed elevations, together with the stair-cases used as vertical airshafts had to create the permanent circulation of air within the houses. However, as social customs did not really allow the rooms of the house to be looked into from the street, delicately carved wooden lattice-work was introduced set into the very open facades, shielding the inside from view, but not blocking the incom-ing airstream. In addition, projecting bay windows

(singular rowshan, plural rawasheen) partially extended the rooms out into the now narrower, and therefore cooler streets. Some houses had an ornately-carved covered wooden structure in the middle of the roof terrace to provide another airy retreat with absolute privacy.

However, the grand farmhouses of Asir never needed such sophisticated ventilation systems, as the highlands are free from humidity and only the daytime heat needs to be kept from intruding into the rooms. Since there is a lack of urban fabric, projecting slate courses added to the exterior walls are designed to shade the sun-dried earth mate-rial and avoid the mud being washed away during periodic heavy rains. Only the crop storage rooms have small vertical slots in their exterior walls to guarantee permanent ventilation of the stored hay and straw.

The university cooperation between Austria and Saudi Arabia has led to a very different level of documentation at the various locations. For Al-Ulah, brief observations at the site could be supplement-ed by more in-depth knowledge from literature on similar sites, whereas for Asir, the diversity of build-ing types within very short distances still raises many questions. For the urban residential homes of Jeddah it was possible for the project team to make rather detailed observations on traditional design strategies for air ventilation, as a result of a con-tour-accurate survey and more in-depth knowledge regarding the genesis of some of the buildings. The most spectacular discovery in terms of the use of incoming air for providing cool relaxation may be the horizontal air vents underneath the floor of the main reception room at the Al Nawar house. Anoth-er point of interest to the scientific community may be the observations on several îwân niche courtyard configurations in Al-Ulah and Jeddah.

KEYWORDSArchitectural heritage, Asir, Courtyard house types, Îwân, Hedjaz, Rowshan, Ventilation, Vernacular ar-chitecture

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Caroline Jäger-KleinHisham Mortada


KURZFASSUNGDas westliche Saudi Arabien mit seinen wesentli-chen kulturellen Region Hedschas und Asir besitzt einen ziemlich unbekannten historischen Gebäude-bestand. Seit kurzer Zeit wächst das Bewusstsein für diese traditionelle Architektur rapide an. Aus diesem Grunde hat das Architekturinstitut der Fakultät für Umweltgestaltung der König Abdul-Aziz Universität in Dschiddah mit dem Institut für Architekturgeschichte und Bauforschung der Technischen Universität eine wissenschaftliche Zusammenarbeit aufgesetzt. Eine kurze Analyse er-ster Ergebnisse der Bau-Dokumentation beweist die außergewöhnlich intelligenten Entwurfsstrategien dieses architektonischen Erbes, um mit den grau-samen Klimabedingungen der Region umzugehen.Drei Orte wurden besonders beleuchtet: Al-Ulah als antike Oasenstadt des fernen Nordens, Dschid-dah, das die großen urbanen Zentren der mittleren Westküste repräsentiert, und Abha im Hochland des Asir mit einigen verstreuten Bauernhöfe in seiner Umgebung. Die Bebauung von Al-Ulah wird von klassischen, zweigeschossigen Atriumhäusern aus Stein dominiert, die über ihre Außenwände direkt aneinander gebaut und zu einem unregelmäßigen, dichten Gefüge mit schmalen Gassen zusammen-gefügt sind – eine typische Stadtbauweise für den südlichen Mittelmeerrand. Der Bautyp bewältigt in Kombination mit der urbanen Struktur das heiße, trockene Wüstenklima des Nordens Saudi Arabiens, indem die Gassen durch die angrenzende Bebauung verschattet sind. Zusätzlich wird die kühle Nachtluft lange durch die Senke des Hofes im Haus gehalten. Außerdem sitzt der hauptsächliche Aufenthaltsraum des Hauses direkt über dem kühlen Luftraum der Gasse, und verbindet die beiden anrainenden Stra-ßenfronten.

Dschiddah hingegen muss mit der extremen Luft-feuchtigkeit, die das Rote Meer in Kombination mit der üblichen Hitze der Region verursacht, fertig werden. Dabei kann es nicht auf den Wind ver-trauen, die normalerweise im Wüstenklima die großen Temperaturdifferenzen zwischen Tag und Nacht verursacht. Der Straßenquerschnitt fällt da-her äußerst breit und nicht sehr verwinkelt aus, wie sonst von einer typisch orientalischen Stadt zu erwarten. In den früheren Perioden der Stadt-entwicklung, vom 17. bis ins 19. Jahrhundert, war innerhalb der Befestigungsmauern dazu auch ausreichend Platz vorhanden, sogar so viel, dass die Häuser großzügige Höfe einschließlich der of-fenen, zweigeschossigen Raumnische (îwân) für den privaten Komfort im Freien beibehalten konn-ten. Eine beständige, langsame und kühle Brise aus dem Norden umströmte die freistehenden Bauvolumina aus Korallenstein. Sie wurde mittels vergitterter Fenster extremen Ausmaßes durch die Innenräume geleitet. Als die florierende Wirt-schaftsentwicklung des späten 19. Jahrhunderts die Hausbesitzer dazu zwang, viel höher als die bis dahin üblichen zwei oder drei Geschoße zu bauen, den zentralen Hof aufzugeben, und die Häuser di-rekt aneinander zu fügen, mussten andere Mittel zur beständigen Durchlüftung gefunden werden. Nun versuchte man, durch ein balanciertes Ver-hältnis zwischen sehr stark geöffneten und absolut geschlossenen Fassaden, sowie durch Einbeziehen der Stiegenhäuser als vertikale Luftschächte die ständige Luftzirkulation innerhalb des Hauses zu erhalten. Da die geschlossene Gesellschaftsform jedoch keine Einsicht von der Straße in die Innen-räume des Hauses gestattet, mussten die extrem offenen Fassaden mit fein geschnitztem Holzgitter-werk versehen werden, um den Einblick, aber nicht

das Eindringen des Luftstromes, zu blockieren. Zu-sätzlich dehnen öffenbare Erkerfenster (rowshan sl, rawasheen, pl) die Räume teilweise in den nun engeren, und daher kühleren, Straßenraum aus. Ergänzend sorgt ein überdachter Raum aus schö-nem Holzschnitzwerk in der Mitte der Dachterrasse für den absolut privaten Rückzug im Freien.

Die stolzen Bauernhöfe des Asir benötigten dage-gen nie derartig kunstvolle Durchlüftungssysteme für ihre Bewohner. Das Hochland ist frei von Luft-feuchtigkeit und nur die Hitze des Tages sollte vom Eindringen abgehalten werden. Aus Mangel an städtischer Struktur muss nun aber die Kon-struktionsweise der Außenmauern dafür sorgen, dass der sonnengetrocknete Lehm mit auskragen-den Schieferplatten beschattet, aber auch in den periodisch auftretenden heftigen Regenfällen nicht weggewaschen wird. Nur die landwirtschaftlichen Speicherräumlichkeiten weisen schmale, senk-rechte Schlitze in den Außenwänden auf, die die permanente Durchlüftung des gelagerten Heu und Stroh zu gewährleisten haben.

Der Rahmen der wissenschaftlichen Zusammen-arbeit zwischen den beiden Universitäten aus Österreich und Saudi Arabien hat bis jetzt zu ei-nem sehr unterschiedlichen Dokumentationsniveau innerhalb der verschiedenen Orte geführt. Für Al-Ulah konnten die ungemein kurzen Beobachtungen vor Ort mit tiefergehenden Erkenntnissen aus der Literatur über ähnliche Lagen abgeglichen wer-den, wohingegen im Asir die Unterschiedlichkeit der Gebäude innerhalb nur kurzer geografischer Distanzen immer noch eine Menge ungelöster Fra-gen offen lässt. Hingegen konnten bezüglich der urbanen Wohnhäuser von Dschiddah bereits sehr detaillierte Aussagen über die traditionellen Ent-wurfsstrategien zur permanenten Durchlüftung als Ergebnis einer genauen Bauaufnahme und der in-timeren Kenntnis über die Baugeschichte einzelner Bauwerke durch das Projektteam getroffen werden. Die spektakulärste Entdeckung über den bewussten Gebrauch der einströmenden Luft zum kühlen Ra-sten besteht wohl in den horizontalen Luftzügen unterhalb des Bodens des Repräsentationsraumes im Haus der Familie Nawar. Eine zweite interessante Beobachtung für die Wissenschaftsgemeinde mag im Nachweis zahlreicher Höfe mit îwân Nischenkon-figuration in Al-Ulah und Dschiddah liegen.

SCHLAGWORTE

Architektonisches Erbe, Asir, Îwân, Hedjaz, Row-shan, Ventilation, traditionelle Architektur

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Fig. 1: Map of the Arab peninsula after Pesce 1976, p.101 with major cultural heritage towns of Hedjaz and Asir marked by Jäger-Klein, VUT

INTRODUCTIONThe traditional architectural design strategies of Western Saudi Arabia are remarkable for their ways of dealing with absolutely harsh climatic con-ditions. This article will focus on ventilation and air circulation aspects at three locations along the Red Sea coast and its nearby hinterland, supple-menting the sparse literature on the vernacular architecture of the region by a discussion of the preliminary results of current building documen-tation. This documentation was undertaken by a joint research team of the Department of Archi-tecture of the College of Environmental Design at the King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and the Department of History of Architecture and Building Archaeology of the Vi-enna University of Technology in Vienna (VUT), Austria. A preliminary fact-finding field trip in 2008, covering Al-Ulah in the north down to Asir in the southwest of the peninsula led to a research project named Documentation and Analysis of Traditional Domestic Architecture in Saudi Arabia being officially established in May 2011. During an intensive campaign in Jeddah in October 2011, under the leadership of the VUT team, a high-tech building survey was used to produce in-depth documentation of the Al Nawar House for the first time. Furthermore, the existing set of floor plans for the Noor Wali house (Khan: 1981) were up-dated to reflect the current condition of the space arrangement, and some detailed measurements were added. At the same time, since the campaign was organized as a training workshop for KAU stu-dents, a lot of energy went into matching different levels of experience. Nevertheless, the VUT team with its own students trimmed the Al Nawar house scans to a complete, contour-accurate survey re-sult in 2D plans, on a 1:50 scale, a physical model of the house on a 1:25 scale, a first structural and functional analysis and finally, a number of design scenarios for rehabilitation and adaptive reuse. In parallel, a KAU team recorded five regions of Hedjaz and Asir and provided the results in writ-ten reports.

The magnificent classification of the traditional architecture of the Arabian Peninsula, edited by Paul Oliver in his Encyclopedia of the Vernacular Architecture of the World in 1997, p.1443-1460, had to serve as the major literary source of reli-able scientific information. The contributions of Darius Zandi in general, of Jon L. Lavelle on Asir and of Michael W. Earls on Hedjaz and Jeddah proved to be extremely helpful in providing an understanding of the physics and the functions of the building types. In addition to being the most elaborate source on building traditions on the Red Sea coast and the Tihama plain, Geoffrey King’s Traditional Architecture of Saudi Arabia (1998) provided the understanding of the genesis of Jed-dah as kernel of Hedjaz. Additionally, his was the only dependable source of information on Al-Ulah, and this was supplemented by Stefano Bianca with his Hofhaus und Paradiesgarten. Architektur und Lebensform in der islamischen Welt (1999). The most in-depth description of the rowshan, the distinguished external feature of the old houses along the Red Sea coast, is still that contained in Jean-Pierre Greenlaw’s 1976 work: The Coral Buildings of Suakin.

This article will focus on three locations in the West of Saudi Arabia: Al-Ulah, an ancient oasis town in the far north of the area; Jeddah, representing the major urban centers of the Western coast; and some scattered farmhouses in the highlands of Asir in the southwest. These locations all have quite dif-ferent climates, reflected in the design strategies developed for air ventilation within their traditional domestic buildings. We begin by introducing cli-mate, geography and urban history.

Al-Ulah is an oasis within a steep, rocky valley more than 300 km north of Medina. It basically runs north to south on the hajj caravan route from Damascus to Medina, and is a typical example of the desert climate of the region; Zandi describes it as typical for the northern region of Saudi Ara-

Fig. 1

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bia: “The temperatures are high in summer with an average daily maximum of 43°C (109°F) and low in winter with an average daily minimum of 10°C (50°F) in January” (Oliver: 1997, p.1443). Extremely hot days in summer are followed by rather cool nights compared to the daytime tem-peratures, changing to rather moderate winters by European standards (but cold for the Arabian Pen-insula), and very dry in general compared to the coastal cities. Nevertheless, there is quite some rainfall during the winter months, until April, when the water sometimes tends to settle like flat lakes on the surface for a while. Geoffrey King tells us that “the district of Al-Ulah has been settled since very ancient times, as the oasis supported the ear-ly Arabian civilizations of Dedan and Lihyan in the sixth century B.C. Inscriptions indicate the exis-tence of a colony from Mai nͨ in Yemen. There was a settlement here known as Wadi’l-Qura’ at the time of the Prophet but the present town developed in later Islamic times. The ruins of settlements associated with these early periods lie north of modern Al-Ulah, and ancient masonry has been reused in the houses … The building stones were brought from al-Khurayba, the ruins to the north. They are laid in loam for mortar; the rafters were of tamarisk, while the doors were of palm wood cut with an axe”(King: 1998, p.79).

Jeddah, about 700 km to the south of Al-Ulah, is situated at a longitude of 39°20’ and latitude of 21°40’, about halfway along the Red Sea’s east-ern coast, on the Tihama plains. It is bordered by the sea to the west and a series of hills run-ning parallel to the Hedjaz Mountains to the east. The whole area is almost flat and free from any topographic relief. The climate is uncomfortable generally due to the geographical location, be-ing a coastal city and near the tropic of Cancer. The temperature ranges from 9° to 33°C with an average of 24C° in the winter, and from 19° to 47°C with an average of 30°C in the summer, at times going as high as 50°C in June. The relative humidity is generally very high most of the year, with an average of 55%, peaking at 80% in the summer. The prevalent wind direction is north-west, of nominal speed most of the year (6 to 15 km/h). (Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather, 2010). Jeddah is the Red Sea harbor for Mecca and therefore the principal Hedjaz town after Mecca. Reports of its wealth deriving from trading with Yemen and Egypt date back to the tenth century. According to King, the Persian traders had been expelled by that time, although he later talks of a Persian community in Jeddah in the 13th century, that the town was then already fortified, and that the palaces of the Persians who had once lived in Jeddah were marvelous, and the streets of the town straight (King: 1998, p.34). The Portuguese were defeated in 1516-17 after a wall had been built around the town in 1506-7 by order of the Mamluk sultan. Nevertheless, the Mamluks had to hand Jeddah over to the Ottomans in 1517. Poncet in 1700 talks of the two-story khans of Jeddah, or-ganized around a central courtyard like in Egypt or Turkey, but it is Burckhardt, who visited Jeddah in 1814, who provides accurate observations on the urban fabric and the houses for the first time: “The streets are unpaved, but spacious and airy; the houses high, constructed of stone, brought for the greater part from the sea-shore, and consisting of madrepores and other marine fossils. Almost every house has two storeys, with many small win-dows and wooden shutters” (quoted in King: 1998, p.44). King also mentions that “Burckhardt noted that the prevailing wind in Jiddah was from the

north, as in Cairo, but contrary to the latter city, the buildings of Jiddah did not have a northward aspect. … Burckhardt also noted an absence of raised ventilator shafts of the type with which he was familiar in Egypt” (King: 1998, p.44). Burck-hardt obviously saw only “the numerous two- and three storey houses of old Jeddah representing a long-standing building style in the town, a tradi-tion older than that of the tower houses” (King: 1998, p.48). The tower houses with their tendency to great height seem to have developed in the early twentieth century. King reflects on that is-sue: “Thus, while these houses may be related in a generalized sense to an old Arabian tradition of building lofty tower houses, the six- and seven sto-rey houses are late: they certainly did not appear before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1870. … In the limited space of the walled town … there was probably a natural tendency to build vertically as Jiddah became more prosperous and crowded, and before the restraints of the city wall was removed in 1947” (King: 1998, p. 49).

Asir Province lies between latitudes 17.25° and 19.50° north and longitudes from 50.00° to 41.50° east. The distance from Abha, the capital of Asir to the Mecca-Taif-Jeddah region is more than 500 km. The Asir region is situated on a high plateau that receives more rainfall than the rest of the country and contains the country’s highest peaks, which rise to almost 3000 m at Jebel Sawdah near Abha. Though data is exceedingly sparse and unreliable, the average annual rainfall in the highlands prob-ably ranges from 300 to 500 mm falling in two rainy seasons, the chief one being in March and April, with some rain in the summer. Temperatures are very extreme, with diurnal temperature varia-tion in the highlands the greatest in the world. It is common for afternoon temperatures to be over 30°C, yet mornings can be extremely frosty and fog can cut visibility down to near 0%. As a result, there is much more natural vegetation in Asir than in any other part of Saudi Arabia. … Asir is home to many farmers who chiefly grow wheat and fruit crops, …” (KAU-AHD Asir: 2012, p.5-6). “The hous-es here tend to be multi-storey buildings, white plastered round windows and doors and with cren-ellated roof parapets serving both as decoration and protection against erosion. The houses are built of stone or packed mud and are rectangular in shape with one or more rooms on each floor and single entrance to the building. Walls are protected against heavy rains by projecting slate courses at half-metre intervals between courses of packed mud. The slates slope downward so that the rain does not run down the walls and melt the mud surfaces,” is how Zandi describes the characteris-tics of the Asiri farmhouse (Oliver: 1997, p.1445).

Now that we have outlined the general features of our three locations, let us focus on specific aspects of house design, again virtually passing through Hedjaz and Asir from North to South.

COOLING THE STREETS WITH BRIDGING ROOM STRUCTURES – FLYING TEAROOMSOld al-Ulah, once an important caravan town on the trading route connecting Yemen with the Medi-terranean coast, still presents itself as an organic mud-cluster of basic courtyard houses on two lev-els (Fig. 2). The basic house design differs from neighborhood to neighborhood, depending on the social status of its owners. In addition, the ex-treme temperatures of the arid desert environs have dictated exterior and interior space qualities for centuries. Its population moved out completely

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Fig. 2: Old Al-Ulah, traditional court-yard house of the northern desert, Jäger-Klein 2008

Fig. 3: Flying tearoom, linking struc-ture above the streets of Al-Ulah, southern city part, Jäger-Klein 2008

Fig. 4:Summer-winter use of differ-ent parts of the typical Persian house after Roland Rainer: Treberspurg 1994, p.15

some years ago when the government provided them with fine new houses, grander than the old ones, with the latest sanitary standards and each single one accessible by car. However, beyond the general contentment about the amelioration of comfort, we heard some sentimental comments from former inhabitants of old al-Ulah on our visit in 2008. Mostly, the comments regarded the loss of the communicative qualities of public space. Modern al-Ulah lacks the shaded corners within the narrow alleys, originally connecting the living quarters with the busy main road, where the car-avans passed through and commercial activities took place under the street arcades. Exploring the site for ourselves, we quickly discovered what the natives meant: the old streets were narrow and meandering in order to provide shelter from direct sunlight. They were partially covered by apart-ments linking one side of the street with the other. The inhabitants called these structures flying tea-rooms, which further explains their function.

The female members of a family, in particular, sat up in the flying tearooms, above the street, invis-ibly monitoring the social life in the neighborhood. They could see everyone who passed by or tried to gain access to their private sphere; a design configured to respond the basic requirements of Islamic culture. Family members would gather in a structure above the street, innumerable gaps and joints in the structure cooling down the hot airstream coming off the desert. The wooden floor, in particular, is rather effectively air conditioned by the cold air of the narrow, shady street un-derneath. The Arabic concepts of finâ and sâbât regulate the use of the public space in front of the house in general. The flying-tearooms of Al-Ulah represent especially sâbât, literarily meaning “the overbridging of the street”, allows so the private use of the public space on top of the lane to relax in the cool airstream there. Bianca (Bianca 1991, 2001: p.248-249) describes this in its social dimen-sion for the old cities of Fez in Morocco and Aleppo in Syria, but not in their climatic context (Fig. 3).

SUNKEN BASIN FOR COOL AIR – THE CEN-TRAL COURTYARDWithin the northern part of Al-Ulah are larger housing units, organized around a rather good-sized courtyard. The courtyard design hints at a garden design probably based on Nabatean knowl-edge of water supply. Ancient Hegra (Al-Hijr or Mada’in Salih), is located just a few kilometers to the north of al-Ulah. Those courtyards show the typical open niche addition which is also called îwân in Syrian and Persian architecture. They serve as the main outdoor reception room, espe-cially in the hot summertime. The large but shaded opening and the extreme height of the space, in combination with sophisticated wind-scoops, in Iran and along the Gulf region rather effectively cool the space. An accurate archeological survey of this probably very old caravan town along the Nabatean trading route would shed more light on the advanced water supply techniques which we assume but which are not noticeable at first sight in the region we are focusing on here.

We would like to develop here a first hypothesis on the use of the îwân in the buildings of the north-west of Saudi Arabia. As there is at Al-Ulah no noticeable trace of wind-catching mechanisms – a technique which is very well known and used by traditional architecture on the other side of the Arab peninsula in the so-called eastern provinces – we have to begin with another theory. Although Al-Ulah is extremely hot in the summer, early 20th century reports by British colonel T.E. Lawrence state that the winters are rather moderate or even cold, and there is no buffering vegetation. The niche without an additional ventilation system could therefore be more for daytime comfort all year round: in summer as a shaded space, in win-ter maybe even as a sunlit and therefore warmed outdoor space at those times when Lawrence talked of sitting freezing within the ancient stone walls of Hellenistic castles. However, as far as we remember from our very short visit, the opening of the niche is always orientated towards north to avoid any direct sunlight intruding at all at any

Fig. 3

Fig. 2

Fig. 4

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Fig. 5: Old Al-Ulah, small shaded courtyard, ancient atrium-house type, Jäger-Klein 2008.

Fig. 6: The structurally-supported, double-room height îwân niche at Al Nawar house, Jeddah, Pe-tra Gruber 2011

Fig. 7: House with îwân niche at cita-del, Aleppo, Syria, Jäger-Klein 2010

time during the year. Maybe the inhabitants of the bigger type of houses in the northern city quarters moved into warmer and more protected parts of the house during the winter. There is no evidence in the smaller housing units in the southern city quarters of a seasonal use of particular parts of the house (as there is in traditional Persian architec-ture (Fig. 4). The houses with the flying tearooms enclose a very small and therefore always shaded courtyard with no îwân-niche at all. In that case, it can be assumed that the courtyard was just a storage space (Fig. 5). Perhaps the families lived exclusively in the upper parts. In summer, the air-conditioned flying tearoom also served as the main outdoor reception room during the day and the family moved onto the open roof terrace at night, when sleeping indoors in enclosed rooms was too hot. In that case, the flying tearoom and roof ter-race was the poorer classes’ version for a garden courtyard with an îwân niche.

In any case, the Al-Ulah types of domestic dwelling all show the typical features of edge-of-the-desert architecture (Bianca, 1999, 2001: p.211) which met the requirements of the customs of social in-teraction and the needs for defendable protection, as well as responding to climatic factors by using the courtyard house type. The closed walls without any exterior openings not only protect against hot winds, sandstorms, wild animals and potential en-emies, but helped to store the cooler air from the night within the house. The sunken basin court-yard, supported by plants and irrigation systems, keeps the air cold, creating a kind of microclimate within the court and the rooms connected to it. The narrow proportions of the streets also keep the exterior façades of the houses shaded through the urban fabric, by avoiding direct contact of the wall surfaces with the incoming sun.

Keeping the rooms cool using double ceiling heightWithin the historic city center of Jeddah (Al Balad) there are no completely overbuilt streets. Hence, the îwân-niche which expands the private outdoor space of the average town house is still prevalent within the multiple-story buildings. Here, clearly, the enclosed courthouse type of building typical of

the desert edge is merging with the tower house type of Yemen, which is not easy, construction-wise, in the specific case of Jeddah. Because of the rather weak foundations and the unstable grounds of the old city center, along the banks of the la-goon, the rounded arches of the vaults change to pointed arches producing more vertical loads and additional, elaborate height. In the hot and humid climate of the flatlands along the Red Sea coast, effective ventilation is essential for comfort. Therefore, there, the îwân develops some vertical dimension, which is reflected in its typical tripar-tite wall design (Fig. 6).

A preliminary analysis shows that the house origi-nally consisted of two parts wrapped around the courtyard with the îwân-niche as the core of the whole family complex as it grew over the years. The upper parts of the house, with their roof ter-races and three sided enclosed (sleeping) rooms on top of the last full floor point to their close relationship to the (probably) far older houses of old Al-Ulah. Sami Nawar assumes that the tradi-tional houses of Jeddah are a maximum of 300 years old, something which is confirmed by Earl (Oliver: 1997, p.1454), whereas our assumption is that some of the stone houses in the core of Al-Ulah are far older than that. The double-shell quarry stone walls there with infillings are typical of the late-Roman building tradition. An accurate archeological survey would probably show that the houses of the northern parts of Al-Ulah are some 2000 years old. And, last but not least, Syrian and Persian îwân niches of private residences within the dense urban context also show the double-height principle quite clearly (Fig. 7).

Bianca’s description of the Northern Syrian îwân typology of Aleppo is an exact match with the one of the Al Nawar house in Jeddah. Deriving from the representative architecture of the palaces of the Sassanids, with their four îwân around one quad-rangular courtyard, in Aleppo over the centuries, it had become reduced to the one niche orientated towards north, which obviously kept the air coolest (Bianca 1999, 2001: p.230). Therefore this was the best and most privileged outdoor place, where one could sit on the platform that covered the entire

Fig. 5

Fig. 7Fig. 6

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floor space of the niche, looking out onto the fully paved courtyard built around a central fountain. The combination of all three features helped to re-duce the air temperature. In addition, the vaulted ceiling of enormous height contained the heated air that went up. In the Al Nawar house, the up-per parts of the walls within the niche even have small openings with lattice girder as additional mechanisms to transport the warmed-up air out of the space.

AIR SHAFTS AND AIR VENTSAnother indication that the building typologies within Jeddah are mixed (courtyard house versus southern Arabian tower house) is the coexistence of a rather grand central courtyard for private use and additional smaller vertical shafts for supplying some of the interior rooms with air and marginal light. The classical courtyard house does not need this feature, as all major rooms are supplied with air and light by generous windows and doorways to the central atrium. The old town of Jeddah obvi-ously grew rapidly within the city walls during the 19th and early 20th centuries and soon ran out of space. Therefore the height of the houses had to be increased and air and light be brought into the inner areas of the houses through additional verti-cal shafts. Earls specifies in particular for Jeddah: “Large houses rather than mansions were built in uneven rows, although they often contrived to occupy a corner in order to catch any additional breeze. … They consisted of small suites of rooms for various members of an extended family, but the plans were repeated on each floor. The stair-way and the hall running like a spine the length of the house established the plan on each floor. … There was also a hammam, toilet and a small kitchen for preparing food on each floor” (Oliver: 1997, p.1455).

Although we cannot be sure about the genesis of the Noor Wali house, there is no indication of an original central courtyard, indicating that it is not a mansion like the Qabel family palace, but rather more closely related to the northern Yemenite tower houses (Fig. 8). There is a small central cov-ered air- and light well running vertically all the way through the building from the entrance hall (Fig. 9). Geoffrey King again describes this more fully: “Near the center of the house was a large rectangular air shaft, running vertically through all floors to provide ventilation. It had arched or rectangular openings in its sides which allowed the air to circulate on each floor. As the shaft was covered by a roof, its purpose was obviously not to admit light in the interior. The efficiency of this shaft as a ventilator was increased by the windows and rawashin on each floor, especially on the west, south and east sides. The height of the building

enabled it to catch breezes high above the streets, where the air was fresher” (King: 1998, p.50).

AIRY COOLING ORIELS Now, it was even more important to have light and air brought into the house via openings within the exterior shell of the street façades while at the same time guaranteeing total privacy. Hence, in the basements, the openings are very narrow so as to shield the interior from sight, whereas in the upper parts, large openings filled with wooden lat-tice work of all kinds characterize the elevations. Some of them are flush with the façade, others, such as the characteristic rawasheen (bay win-dows), extend out into the public space and now taking over the task of supplying the interiors with fresh cool air and light. This is similar to the fly-ing tearooms of Al-Ulah in terms of the general principle of partially extending the house out into the cool airstream of the shaded street. However, in Jeddah, it is not a complete room that bridges the street as in Al-Ulah. Now a room-addition ex-tends out into the public space allowing also the opposite neighbor to do the same. However, the floor of the room extension is still cooled by the airstream coming through underneath the wood-en structure, allowing one to rest comfortably on top of it. Sitting or lying within this airy orielsof delicately-carved latticework allowed people to participate in the sights and sounds of life out-side, unseen of course, and therefore in privacy as well as in the highest comfort, something which is appreciated in Saudi Arabia and in other places as well (Fig. 10).

The colleagues in Jeddah insist that most living rooms were situated in the northeast or north-west corner of the house, as confirmed by Earls: “Wherever possible houses were orientated north to catch the prevailing wind. …At the front of the house was the majilis with a mashrabiyya pro-jecting over the street adding an alcove or oriel 2.4 m (7.9 ft) long and 1.3 m (4.3 ft) deep, where people would congregate in the cool” (Oliver: 1997, p. 1455). Greenlaw, back in 1976, gave us by far the most precise description of the purpose and function of the rowshan, including the fact that its dimensions are related to the human body to make a “carpeted alcove about 2.40 m. wide by 1.20-1.40 m. deep, a space in which two or three people can sit around a coffee-tray or hookah in comfort (Fig 11). The lower portion is paneled to a height of about 50 cm. Seated on the roshan floor, one can lean over this lower part and see into the street. This and the open portion above is called the jalsa; it is divided horizontally into two unequal sets of shutters which close the open-ings; the larger top ones form an extra shade, the smaller lower ones are supported by brackets

Fig. 8: Full set of ground plans of Noor Wali house, Jeddah. VUT-KAU workshop 2011 (revision of plans drawn up by Khan, 1981)

Fig. 9: Central air shaft of the Noor Wali house, Jeddah, taken from entrance hall, Jäger-Klein 2011

Fig. 10: Typical rawasheen space con-figuration within traditional houses in Jeddah; reconstruc-tion by the Smart Growth Unit of KAU under Jenaideb, 2008

Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Fig. 10

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outside called mada’af to make a ledge. The upper shutters are held open by long, metal hooks which act as stays; … Above the jalsa there was another, paneled portion in which ventilating grilles were inserted. The elements of a roshan can be varied in a number of ways. … Roshans could be kept open at night for sleeping in coolness. … Most of the leisure-time was spent in the roshans, chat-ting, sipping coffee, smoking a hookah, eating, sleeping, or gazing at the seascape …, the arrival and departure of caravans and pilgrims to Mecca” (Greenlaw: 1976, p.21).

CARDINAL DIRECTIONS AND COOLING WINDSIn 2008, our hosts Dr. Adas and Dr. Jenaideb told us that the more open building elevations of build-ings in Jeddah are oriented towards northwest. The cool winds originate from this direction, pro-duced through the general wind direction and the sea. Hence our closer observations in recent years do not prove to be fully consistent in terms of car-dinal directions for the open parts of the façade. Naturally, it also depends on the situation of the house within the urban bloc. Nevertheless, the two residential buildings which we surveyed more closely, the Al Nawar house and the Noor Wali house, both match the recommendations. The Al Nawar house is embedded into a building bloc but luckily, both the western and the northern façade are street elevations, so they permit openings. To the east and south, the building is attached to the neighbouring structures of more or less the same building height, which does not permit any openings at all.

The town house of the Noor Wali family is a nearly freestanding structure with an irregular ground plan. Nevertheless, the main façade is oriented to-wards the north. The general layout of this northern façade is composed very symmetrically along the vertical middle axis (Fig 12). The focal point of the façade is a distinctively shaped rowshan positioned in front of the shared “roof gallery” of both family branches, now covered with a pergola structure to allow some light in and to keep the birds out. Access to this roof gallery is from both major fam-ily apartments framing it, which Khan in his 1981 publication on the vernacular architecture of the old city of Jeddah calls mabit. At least the north-western apartment is designed according to the principle of the mafradsch, the traditional viewing room of the male family members on the upper-most floor of the Yemenite tower house (Bianca, 1999, 2001: p.243). The mafradsch is also a very airy cage of latticework, in this case flush with the façade of the house. The two “open” directions of the room allow a wide view over the land for de-fense and trading purposes. The mafradsch of the Noor Wali house is oriented toward the harbor, so

that the merchant family that owned had a great view of the incoming ships. In addition, the open-ness around the corner must also have contributed to a very fine room climate for the male family members observing the merchant ships bringing them wealth.

Noor Wali house in general is built more along the lines of southern Arabian architectural tra-ditions than the Al Nawar house. It completely lacks a courtyard with an îwân-niche, unlike the Al Nawar house and some other major merchant family palaces of Jeddah, such as the Qabel-house. The Qabel family residence would again seem to indicate a merging of the two different build-ing traditions. Basically, it could be described as two tower houses connected by a linking wing, all winding around three sides of the courtyard with a clearly visible îwân niche. The fourth side of the court is oriented towards the street, in this case not a shaded, small side-street but the ma-jor trading route coming in from the north gate and leading towards the central suq (bazaar). Of course, the court is enclosed by a surrounding wall guaranteeing a certain amount of privacy. Nevertheless, the buttress supporting the vault of the pointed arch of the niche reaches out into the street space and therefore telling even passers-by of the existence and location of the îwân (Fig. 13). To stay on the subject of cardinal directions: both îwâns, the one in the Al Nawar house and the one in Qabel House are located on the southern wall of the central courtyard. Oriented towards the north, no direct sunshine ever reaches the niche, which thus provides a permanently shady, cool extension of the courtyard in the shape of a raised stone platform.

ACCELERATING THE INCOMING AIRIf the speed of an airstream is increased, the wind becomes fresher – and not only subjective-ly. Basic physics tells us that the temperature of accelerated air sinks. This is the principle of all the pierced screens used as infillings of the grand openings within the massive, load-bearing exterior walls of the traditional houses of old Jeddah. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, in her 1995 article for the Archi-tectural Review, reflects on Jeddah and the huge pottery jars in wooden stands on the balconies that keep the drinking water cool by evaporation (Fig. 14). In addition, the downward louvers in the rawasheen openings help direct incoming air towards the floor, thereby providing circulation in a larger volume of the room. The projection above the opening (Fig. 15) deflects the air in-side the building and enhances the ventilation. Air movement increases convection and evaporation, which helps lower the temperature of the body and making the inner spaces of the building more comfortable during the hot days.

Fig. 13: Qabel Mansion, Jeddah: sus-pension buttress of the îwân niche as seen from the street, Jäger-Klein 2011

Fig. 11: Basket rooms on the façades of restored historic houses, Rijal Alma in Asir, Jäger-Klein 2008

Fig. 12: Rowshan façade design on the northern facade of Noor Wali house, Jeddah, Jäger-Klein 2011

Fig. 11 Fig. 12 Fig. 13

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Fig. 14: Traditional cooling system for incoming air in Persia accord-ing to Roland Rainer, Treber-spurg 1994, p.15

Fig. 15: Main street of Mecca, Photo-graph by Gervais-Courtellem-ont, 1885; El-Hage 1997, p.49

Fig. 16: Mechanism to transport the heated-up air from the Winter-garten into the house, Treber-spurg 1994, p.86

Fig. 17: Black tent textile cooling a street in Jeddah; photograph by T.E. Lawrence in 1916; Facey/Grant 2002, p.46

Fig. 18: Aerial view of the walled city of Jeddah with freestanding tower-like houses ca. 1940; photograph published by Pesce 1976, p.112

Fig. 19: Ventilation system of the tra-ditional houses of Jeddah; reconstruction by the Smart Growth Unit of KAU under Je-naideb, 2008

These are the physical principles of rawasheen architecture. The totally enclosed, massive walls also keep the heat out, absorb the energy of the sun during the day and release their stored warmth during the cool hours of the early morn-ing. They buffer climatic conditions in the same way that the recently-configured contemporary architecture of the low-energy consumption or “passive” houses of Austria and Germany do, al-beit with an intentionally opposite effect. Whereas the northern regions of the world save energy for heating through trapping and storing the incom-ing solar energy for as long as possible within the house, the hotter southern regions want to get rid of the unavoidable incoming heat as quickly as possible. Both principles require need permanent ventilation within the house. The northern passive house tries to distribute the incoming solar energy equally within the differently-orientated rooms of the house. For example, in passive houses, a Win-tergarten is a glass cube attached to the southern elevation, producing warm air which then is dis-tributes itself to the cooler parts of the house, if the overall space design allows for the circula-tion (Fig. 16). The circulation is permanent, if the difference in temperature of the various sides of the building volume is used and an exchange of air is allowed through the ceiling design and open staircases.

CONSTANT CIRCULATION OF AIRUnlike the usual urban fabric of a typical oriental town in the hot and arid climate, where the streets are shaded by the neighboring buildings, “in Jed-dah, the houses were set apart and freestanding where-ever possible. The streets were wider and more numerous which aided the passage of air and cross-ventilation in this hot humid region” (Oli-

ver: 1997, p.1445). The streets of Jeddah are in places so wide that they needed additional shad-ing by loosely-woven textiles, as clearly shown in a remarkable historical photograph taken by T.E. Lawrence in 1916 (Fig. 17). Aerial views, such as the one taken by Fielden in 1938 or another from circa 1940 published by Pesce (Fig. 18) also show that Jeddah had within its walls limited space and consisted of rather high but still more or less free-standing, multiple-story buildings, often consisting of 2 or 3 modest tower houses combined to make one building complex owned by a single family.

Michael W. Earls further explains the hybrid char-acter of the mansions of Jeddah: “The Hijazi house was urbane in character, adapted to the close con-fines of such densely built cities as Mecca, Medina and Jeddah. It was often built on irregular, con-fined sites, perhaps having buildings on three sides and incorporating a shop at the front. Yet it had to provide a habitable environment for the family in hot, humid climate. The house also had to provide the families with the intense seclusion required by Islam, and yet be accessible for traders, as many business affairs and ordinary social interaction took place there. The Hijazi house managed to incorporate all these requirements by means of courtyards, air shafts, high ceilings and, above all, the screened windows and balconies (mashrabi-yyat). Every possible gust of air was caught by the screened windows and encouraged to circulate through the rooms (Fig. 26), by means of grilles over doorways or in walls. The air was conducted through wide hallways leading to a hosh or court-yard. Ceilings were often almost 5.5 m (18 ft) high in the main rooms. A wide hallway (dihliz) on the ground floor and repeated on the other floors helped to ventilate the house, for it was essential

Fig. 14 Fig. 15 Fig. 16

Fig. 17 Fig. 18 Fig. 19

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Fig. 20: Longitudinal section of Nawar house, Jeddah, with computer simulation of the air circula-tion; VUT, Wolfgang Stumpf 2012

Fig. 21: Longitudinal section of the Al Nawar house, Jeddah, with marking showing air shafts underneath the diwan; VUT, Jäger-Klein 2012

Fig. 22: West elevation of Al Nawar house, with markings show-ing air vent openings used to cool the diwan; VUT, Jäger-Klein 2012

Fig. 23: Penthouse on top of Naseef house, Jeddah, Jäger-Klein 2008

to have continuous air movement … Windows were large but screened and often given added shish (lattice) screens at the openings to prevent any possible glimpse inside by a neighbor. … The hall-way led to the stairs and a small courtyard (hosh) or, at least, an air vent. At the rear of the house were the diwan and the qa’a. These were the main reception rooms, the diwan being most commonly used. It had raised areas at either end where the coffee was prepared. … The qa’a was a more in-timate reception room, often used in the hotter weather because of its high ceiling; the qa’a, and perhaps the diwan, would have a jela or air vent to the roof, making them the most comfortable rooms” (Oliver: 1997, p.1453).

VUT students quickly learned that the trick is to force the air into the building by means of a tunnel effect first, keep the airstream flowing within the sheltered and therefore calm interior and finally, suck the heated air out of the structure (Fig. 20). After working with a 1:25 scale physical model of the Al Nawar house in the light laboratory at the Danube University at Krems and testing out curl-simulation and ventilation-simulation programs developed for airplane design the research team from the VUT began to understand that there is a far more complex interplay between natural ven-tilation and the burning sunlight heating up the surfaces of the building volume, and one which we cannot yet fully explain.

Even more fascinating was the discovery, through the contour-accurate survey, of the intelligent placement of cross-sections throughout the build-ing volume and the physical model of the house that the major reception room (diwan) with its marvelous wooden ceiling also had an air-condi-tioned wooden floor. Underneath this room, we discovered, is an inaccessible space of about one meter in height (Fig. 21) with three small gird-er openings to the narrow street on the front of the house (Fig. 22) bringing in the cool northern winds. To ensure the ventilation of this space, the opposite walls have corresponding openings

onto the dark staircase, which help bring out the heated-up air through the difference in tempera-ture. That is what Earl might have meant when he talked of ”air vents”! This process ensured that the wooden floor covered with marvelous Persian rugs to sit on remained cool. In addition, there was cross-corner ventilation provided by the ra-washeen, ideally located to the North as well as to the East. To the north, the rowshan projected out into the space above the private courtyard which was kept rather cool by the principle of the sunken cold air of the night and its storage through the stone floor placed over the natural earth ground. The other rowshan extruded out into the street space of the street running from the north to the south and therefore almost parallel to the shore. This ensured a constant and rather cool draught through cardinal and basic wind direction. We even assume that this cooler airstream was conducted through a vertical edge within the building volume directly into the courtyard as soon as it had passed the height of the wall that divided the courtyard from the street.

KITCHEN TERRACE, ROOF TERRACE AND AIRY PENTHOUSEThe easiest way to have a share of the modest but steady cooling wind from northwest was to spend time in the roof space. The abandoned housing structures of old Al-Ulah clearly show that families spent most of their time on the flat roofs, protect-ed from the burning sunlight by partially-enclosed and lightly-covered structures such as the flying tearooms and the connected roof terraces. For the Asir region Jon F. Lavelle reports that: “Cooking was done on an upper floor or terrace. The lat-ter was also used for socializing in the evening and provided an appropriate vista to watch for approaching enemies” (Oliver: 1997, p.1449).

At the same time, the inhabitants of Jeddah and the other harbor towns along the Red Sea coast with its high humidity and harsh sunshine also longed to live outdoors in the permanent airstream to escape the stuffy indoor rooms. Earls again

Fig. 20 Fig. 21

Fig. 22 Fig. 23

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Fig. 24: Ventilated main kitchen at Na-seef house, for serving guests on roof terrace, Jäger-Klein 2008

Fig. 25: Self-shading façade of tradi-tional houses in Asir; palace at Abha, Jäger-Klein 2008

Fig. 26: Wall slots to ventilate storage spaces within the agricultural building structures of Asir, Quarrada, Jäger-Klein 2008

describes accurately: “The roof of the house be-ing the coolest spot was a popular area. It was screened by masonry walls or lattice (shish). The area was divided into roofless rooms for sleep-ing, work or drying clothes. There was often a roofed room or penthouse (kushk), usually having beautiful woodwork (Fig. 23). It was the favourite place of relaxation for most owners” (Oliver: 1997, p.1455). Earlier he had already explained the typi-cal crenulation decor of the Hijazi house: “The roof area (satieh) was surrounded by a parapet wall often topped with merlons in the Egyptian man-ner” (Oliver: 1997, p.1453). In Jeddah, most of the cooking (Fig. 24) also took place in close proxim-ity to the roof terraces – there is always an open terrace next to the main kitchen for ventilation, as we saw during our 2008 visit when on the first day we found ourselves on the top of the Naseef House in Jeddah, the historic governmental struc-ture of the city center, where most of our teaching took place during the workshop in 2011. This was again the case in 2011, when we first had access to the Noor Wali house and the KAU students still remembered their grandfathers cooking for guests in the kitchen highest up in those tall structures.

CROSS-VENTILATION FOR STORAGE BUILDINGSThe farmhouses of Asir do not need such sophis-ticated protection against the heat and humidity, as the region receives sufficient rainfall. This is Lavelle’s brief description: “North Yemeni-influ-enced, rectangular, tower-like structures served as dwellings and defensive watch-tower to pro-tect human life, livestock and grain from raiding, enemy tribes. The typical dwelling is three sto-reys composed of a rubble stone base with upper storeys built of layers of sun-dried earth with pro-jecting slate courses” (Oliver: 1997, 1448). Zandi gives the reason: “Walls are protected against heavy rains by projecting slate courses at half-metre intervals between courses of packed mud. The slates slope downward so that the rain does not run down the walls and melt the mud surfaces” (Oliver: 1997, 1445). Our theory is that the pro-jecting slate courses are also used to shade the

facades (Fig. 25). The next step in our project will be devoted to proving this simulating the heating up of the walls with and without the shading slates.

Lavelle continues: “The windowless ground floor, with one small entrance covered by a thick wooden door, was used to store food and shelter livestock, securing them from raiding enemy tribes. Ground floors contain small holes in the walls for venti-lation and the discharge of firearms. …” (Oliver: 1997, 1449) In 2010, Sieghartsleitner expressed his doubts on the latter at length, but supported the former argument that the small vertical slots within the exterior walls (Fig. 26) ensured per-manent cross-ventilation of the stored hay and straw. The Austrian researchers know this feature well from their own vernacular agricultural build-ings. Such a design is not only provides a good response to extreme climatic conditions, it also helps to avoid the harvest catching fire.

CONCLUSIONThe traditional architecture of Western Saudi Arabia had to respond not only to the usual extremely high temperatures of the desert climate conditions, but along the Red Sea coast, it also had to deal with issues of high humidity. Therefore it was not suffi-cient to vary the atrium house type, the mashrabiya architecture of the Islamic-Mediterranean and the irregular street network of the oriental town in gen-eral. Over the centuries, a sophisticated building design had to be developed to enable the interac-tion between pushing in and sucking out of air to accelerate its speed and to ensure the constant circulation of air within the structures. The specific urban pattern, the height of the mainly freestand-ing housing structures with air shafts and air vents within, special (projecting bay) windows, the con-figuration of pierced screens and horizontal wooden shutters to influence the direction of the airstream, the extreme ceiling height used in main areas, with grilles positioned in the upper wall parts, and last but not least, air-conditioned floors to sit on were successfully used for centuries.

In summary, one can state in general that either

Fig. 25 Fig. 26

Fig. 24

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Main-Author:Prof. Dr. Caroline JAEGER-KLEIN Vienna University of Technol-ogy, Department for History of Architecture and Building Archaeology, Austria. Dr. Caroline JAEGER-KLEIN teaches history of architecture and preservation of monu-ments at the Technical Uni-versity of Vienna as well as at the University of Business and Technology in Prishtina, Kosovo. After university stud-ies in Austria and the United States (University of Michigan Ann Arbor), she specialized on the Austrian Architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition to her theoretical focus, she continued teach-ing design courses on build-ing in a historical context, her master thesis topic. In 1996 and 2012 she led the federal research study on current Aus-trian school buildings. At the moment she is in charge of the theoretical part of an in-ternational research program on the traditional domestic architecture of Saudi Arabia and prepares together with Plakolm-Forsthuber the major scientific publication on the former lunatic asylum of Vi-enna on Steinhof, a spectacu-larly modern pavilion hospital opened in 1907. She is expert-in-court for the protection of monuments as well member of the International Council of Monuments and Sites of UNES-CO. In latter function in 2013 she directed the Southeast Eu-rope regional group conference of ICOMOS. Contact: [email protected]

Co-Author:Univ. Prof. Dr. Hisham MORTADADepartment of Architecture, Faculty of Environmental De-sign, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi ArabiaContact: [email protected]

the streets were so narrow as to provide shade for each other or so wide that the cooling winds could reach the open façades. Where they were shaded, projecting house elements such as the traditional casement windows called rawasheen, or bridging structures linking rooms above the narrow streets (flying tearooms) extruded out into public space and kept the structure at a comfortable tempera-ture. Staircases and/or covered air shafts and air vents ( jela) provided all floors with fresh air. A mixture of very open and totally closed elevations generated temperature differences which created a permanent circulation of air within the houses. The courtyard (hosh) serves as a sunken basin to retain the cool air of the night. If the courtyard be-came too hot or the basement was too humid, the family would move up to the flat roof which was permanently bathed in a pleasantly cool breeze. A covered, freestanding room called a kushk, made of beautifully-ornamented woodwork, sat in the middle of the roof terrace like a penthouse, al-lowing a daytime retreat into privacy and shade if there was no courtyard available. Last but not least, the main, open-fire kitchen was always situ-ated close to an open terrace for ventilation and to avoid additional hot air coming into the house.

Although the sparse, but very accurate scientific literature still from the 20th century on the tra-ditional architecture in general covered most of the design strategies such as space-display and room arrangement, orientation of the building and interaction with the urban fabric in their response to the challenging climate, the joint KAU-VUT re-search project was able to investigate these design strategies for the first time on individual buildings by means of a contour-accurate survey of building structures such as the Al Nawar house in Jeddah. The choice of Al Nawar was really successful, as the team was able to research the features on an old, but average residential house from the times before the height of the houses grew and the streets became narrower due to the booming real estate market after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1870. What no one had so far observed was the air-conditioned floor, with horizontal air vents, of the main reception room of the Al Nawar house. Although we now have some ideas about ventilation and shading, there is still much to be done in terms of exploring the capacity of diffu-sion of air and humidity before we can come to a conclusion as to the intelligence of this particular traditional architecture.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThe authors would like to thank the Saudi Minis-try of Higher Education for financing the research project in 2011-2014, the Baladia of Jeddah under Sami Nawar for its valuable support during the 2011 workshop, the Vienna University of Technol-ogy for enabling a design studio on Nawar-house in 2013-2014 and the Danube University Krems for access to their light laboratory.

REFERENCESBianca, S., 1999. Hofhaus und Paradiesgarten. Architektur und

Lebensformen in der islamischen Welt, München, Deutschland (second edition 2001)

Buchan, J., 1996. Jeddah Old & New, London, UK

Burckhardt, J.L., 1829. Travels in Arabia. An account of those ter-ritories in Hedjaz which the Mohammedans regard as sacred, London, UK

El-Hage, B., 1997. Saudi Arabia: Caught in Time 1861-1939, Read-ing, UK

Facey, W. and Grant, G., 2002. Saudi Arabia by the first photog-raphers, London, UK

Greenlaw, J.-P., 1995. The Coral Buildings of Suakin: Islamic archi-tecture, planning, design and domestic arrangements in a Red Sea port, London, UK

Jäger-Klein C., 2012. On search for identity – Potentials of Domes-tic Building Traditions in Saudi Arabia in: Intar Journal, Vol_03_2011: Adaptive Reuse in Emerging Economies, Department of Interior Architecture, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, USA.

Khan, S.M., 1981. Jeddah old houses: A study of vernacular archi-tecture of the old city of Jeddah. Saudi Arabian Council for Science and Technology, KSA.

KAU-AHD Yanbu, 2011. King Abdul Aziz University Jeddah, Ar-chitectural Heritage Documentation of Yanbu al-Bahr, October 2011, KSA.

KAU-AHD Asir, 2012. King Abdul Aziz University Jeddah, Archi-tectural Heritage Documentation of Asir province, May 2012, KSA

King, Geoffrey, 1998. The Traditional Architecture of Saudi Arabia, London – New York.

Lawrence, T.E., 1926. The seven pillars of wisdom. A triumph. Privately printed in 1926, first published by Jonathan Cape in 1935, Great Britain.

Llewellyn-Jones, R., 1995. The coral city of old Jeddah – Saudi Ara-bia, in: The Architectural Review, Vol. 198, No. 1183, pp. 81-83, London, UK

Oliver, P., 1997. Vernacular Architecture of the World, Volume 2. Cultures and Habits – Arabian Peninsula, p. 1443-1460, Cambridge, UK

Pesce, A., 1974. Jiddah. Portrait of an Arabian City, Treviso, Italy (second edition 1976).

Rainer, R., 1977. Anonymes Bauen im Iran, Graz, Austria.

Sieghartsleitner, A., 2010. Traditionelle Bauformen im Westen Saudi Arabiens, Diploma Thesis, Vienna University of Technology, Department for History of Architecture and Building Archaeology, Vienna, Austria.

Treberspurg, M., 1994. Neues Bauen mit der Sonne. Ansätze zu einer klimagerechten Architektur, Wien-New York.

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