17- Traditional Residential Architecture: (Click on images to enlarge)

Vernacular Architecture: The word is derived from the Latin word verna, domestic slave. In architecture, it was widely used form the 1970s on to designate indigenous, architect-less, low-tech, and mostly un-urban residential architecture.

 

Possible influences on the formation of vernacular types:

1. Climate and locale.
2. Social structure and religious beliefs.
3. Technological know-how.
4. Economics.
5. Taste, precedents and models.

 

Case Studies: The varieties in vernacular types in a single country:Syria:

• Riwaq-type houses and liwan-type houses: variations on a theme.
• Domical adobe houses in Northern Syria (Khan Shaykhun): rural innovations or representatives of a missing precedent.
• The hosh house: Rural collective housing

Vernacular Housing types in Syria: axonometric, plan, section, and context

 

The requirements of security and defensibility

• Ksours of the Berbers in South Morocco: singular ksar, a fortified village.
• Kasbah of the Berbers in South Morocco: fortified courtyard house.

Aerial view of a fortified ksar in the Vallee du draa, Morocco

A ksar on the top of a mountain between Fez and Marrakesh, Middle Atlas

 

The spread of a traditional type beyond the confines of a single region:

• Upper-class, multi-storied urban dwellings based on the Yemeni models which spread across the area of coffee trade in the Red Sea into Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Rosetta in Egypt.
• Brick tower-houses of Rashid (Rosetta), the Delta, Egypt.
• Adobe tower-houses of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: The Nourwali House.

Exterior facade of a tower house in Rashid, Rosetta

Nourwali House exterior street facade

 

Persistence of a type throughout the economic scale and the climatic spectrum:

Iranian adobe houses with courtyard:

• Covered and open courtyard houses in Zavareh

Plan of a covered courtyard house in Zavareh

Views of the courtyard facades in an open courtyard house in Zavareh

Plan of an open courtyard house in Zavareh

 

• Open courtyard: Boroujerdi House, Kashan

View of a courtyard in the Boroujerdi House

Dome and multiple windcatchers above the main hall in the Boroujerdi House

 

Regional variations of a single type based on construction techniques:

Anatolian houses:

• First floor stone construction
• Second floor, built of light material, projects over corbels. Plan is sofa type. 

An example of an Anatolian house; Safranbolu, 19th century

Anatolian house plans and elevations

 

• Ashlar stone 1st floor + wood frame and bricks 2nd floor: Apolyut, Bursa.
• Undressed stone with wood rafters 1st floor + Wood 2nd floor: Antalya.
• Ashlar stone 1st floor + plastered wood frame 2nd floor: Anamur and Safranbolu.
• Wood shingles 1st and 2nd floor: Eyup.

Ashlar + wood house, Apalyut village

Ashlar and plaster wood frame, Safranbolu