The Material Culture of Our Home
Exploring the possibilities of reviving vernacular architecture and ancient techniques.
Inspired by my time in the Middle East working as a Senior Strategy Conulstant for SYPartners in early 2023.
“The home is like a second skin. Whether you have a simple home or a small home, it’s a conscious space which affects the way you feel. You shape your home and it shapes you back.” - Anupama Kundoo
At the start of 2023, I spent close to two months in the Middle East.
While I was based in Abu Dhabi for the most part, I also traveled to Dubai and Sharjah, and into the Dubai Conservation Reserve desert.
A weekend was also spent in Oman, a stunning country whose capital, Muscat, is built into the mountains – a picturesque city of low-lying buildings painted only in shades of whites and beiges, creating the most serene of palettes against the dusty pink sunsets that breaks into the horizon of the capital.
It is the serenity of these landscapes, and the strong cultural values and aesthetics of the Bedouin tribes that are imbued in everyday life that captivated me the most in the Middle East. From the usage of colors, materials and light design in a region that comes to life at night, the symbiotic relationship that Middle Easterns have cultivated between their land and their people were inherent in the fabric of its cities’ architecture.
👁️ AN EYE ON CULTURE 👁️
I share 3 sustainable material design and architecture solutions that I discovered and was deeply inspired by: Arish Architecture, Porous Coral and Earthenware.
#1. Arish Architecture, and the case for reviving vernacular architecture - Once a common sight in the Liwa Oasis, Arish (sometimes also spelled as “Areesh”) is a form of traditional technology / type of vernacular architecture that uses dried palm leaves from the date palm tree - a native species heralded for its environmental and cultural value.
Architecturally, the date palm tree leaves provided ample amounts of shade and protection from wind in the dunes, and were known to cool traditional homes down by 23°C as compared to its external environment.
Similar to the revival of Bamboo architecture in Bali, opportunities to revive and modernize Arish architecture is ripe for the picking.
An advocate of Arish, architect Dr. Sandra Piesik states, “with traditional renewable resources for building materials readily available in more economically challenged regions, people could continue using them also today for construction of structures to meet local needs including food shelters, schools or local clinics… this is an issue being discussed by UNESCO and UNCCD as we speak… The difficulty is applying indigenous techniques to a culturally developed world.”
As Frank Ghery states, “timeless architecture should “yearn for timelessness.” It should strive to create buildings of both its time and place and yet somehow transcend those limitations to become more significant. Timeless architecture should be simple, elegant, and functional but embrace complexity and contradiction where appropriate. And perhaps most importantly, it should be in harmony with the natural world, creating buildings that work with, rather than against, the environment in which they are situated.”
Designboom’s article offers this provocation:
How might we modernize age-old aesthetics to bring back traditional methods and materials as solutions to very modern issues across the Middle East and beyond?
Credit: AQNB
Credit: The National News | Sabla Project, modernizing Arish architecture to tackle environmental challenges like food storage
#2. Porous coral and its ability to cool: Pre-concrete and oil boom, dried coral and mud plaster was a common material used to build wall structures in the UAE and its surrounding coastal countries.
The porous nature of corals enabled it to withstand the harsh climates of the region and helped optimize airflow, acting as a natural cooling system in blistering summers.
Today, coral has inspired companies such as Ant Studio, based in Delhi, to create “CoolAnt Coral”, a cooling system that fights air pollution and serve cooling needs. Hyperganic Technologies, an AI-based design-software firm in Munich, is using elements also inspired by intricate designs found in coral to 3D print heat exchangers with radically different structures that could lead to 10X higher efficiency of residential air-con units, at the same cost. And lastly, Fortera, based in the US, has created a low CO2 cement, also inspired by corals.
What are some modern materials and objects that ‘pollute’ our surroundings - both environmentally and aesthetically - that are ripe for re-designing for a more sustainable world?
#3 Earthenware for thermal comfort – Translated as “baked earth” in Latin, terracotta pottery has been used traditionally to store drinking water during the hot summer months across hot climates and desert cultures. From the “jarrah” in rural Palestinian cultures, the Omani ‘Jihal’ pots from Bahla, to Matka pots in India, earthenware is most known for its natural cooling properties.
Moreover, pottery is also regarded as a skilled craft that depicted a way of life. “The kind of raw material used for pottery has great influence over the instincts of the craftsman as his production reflects the human nature that expresses how he is linked to the community he lives in and embodies his experience in life in general,” says the Public Authority for Craft Industries (PACI)."
In food and drinks, earthenware boasts claims of being alkaline, neutralizing pH levels and adding nutrients into food like calcium, phosphorous, iron, magnesium and sulphur. As a building material, designers like Yael Issacharov have experimented with incorporating the method of cooling in clay pots as ‘active walls’ to provide thermal comfort.
Credit: Fast Company Renders of the terracotta active walls (Nave Air Conditioning) by Yael Issacharov
As we design new buildings, what cultural codes are we choosing to weave into the fabric of our environment?
Credit: Ant Studio
Credit: DAR
Further Reading:
Interested in reading more on this topic? Here are some links to dive deeper into:
Hassan Fathy - an Egyptian architect born in 1900 who believed in ‘sustainable architecture’. He argued that: “once a particular tradition is established the architects is to keep this tradition going with his own invention and in science to give it that additional momentum that is save it from coming to a standstill”. He believed that local resources should be used to cater to the needs of its inhabitants.
Wall House by Anupama Kundoo - Featured on an episode of Apple’s Home, Wall House in Auroville is an experimental home by Anupuma Kandoo that was constructed using handcrafted materials. It was later re-constructed for the Venice Biennale on the venue itself, using local artisans. Read her interview with the Telegraph India where she explores materiality in relation to her Self and her home: “So for about a whole decade I lived very simply in a thatch hut. For me it was reducing and liberating myself... to be more about life rather than things that we accumulate. It was more about using that opportunity to find out what is essential and what is superficial. It was about celebrating material by paying attention to essential ones. I remember a postcard that I saw recently. It said: “All you need is less.” …