Traditional Architecture

Traditional Arab architecture solved the problem of heat without machinery, and it did so with a consistent logic that reappears from Morocco to Oman.

The courtyard is the starting point. Rooms face inward around an open square, often with a fountain and planting; the court cools overnight, the cold air sinks and feeds the rooms through the morning, and privacy is complete because no window opens onto the street.

Onto that base each region added its own devices. The barjeel wind tower of the Gulf catches breeze at roof height and drives it down into the room below. The mashrabiya, a screen of turned wooden spindles, admits light and air while blocking sight and glare, and the pots of water set behind it cool the air as it passes. Thick mud-brick and stone walls delay the day's heat until night, when it is welcome.

The decorative vocabulary is equally coherent — muqarnas vaulting, zellij and qashani tile, carved stucco, calligraphic bands and geometric patterns generated from a circle. Everything is applied to surface rather than to structure, which is why the same ideas move so easily between a mosque, a house and a fountain.