COURTYARD HOUSING AS AN URBAN CATALYST_A Report by Rob Rostron and Benjamin Hale

Introduction


Courtyard housing was one of the first types of any domestic architectural development, first seen between 6400-6000BC in Neolithic settlements. The most traditional layout arrangement of a courtyard house is where the spaces are disposed around a central courtyard.

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The initial logic behind a courtyard house was to create a space to seek shelter from the outside. It allowed a dwelling to have an open outdoor space but still within the enclosure and confines of the building itself. Early examples of courtyard housing, particular seen with the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, also demonstrate a correlation between religious beliefs and cosmology with the design of a courtyard. We will discuss this further in this report through our literature reviews.


Over time, the courtyard house has continued to prove its advantages over other forms of housing design. It allows for a solid and rational configuration, even on a small plot in a highly dense urban area, and enables a controlled amount of daylight into all the rooms, as well as keeping the house cool and well ventilated. Due to its climatic controls, we can see numerous examples particularly in hot and humid countries and as a result the courtyard house has formed the urban fabric of numerous medinas across the Islamic world.


Furthermore, the courtyard house can give away ideas about its contextual and cultural relevance. It can act as a tool to discover a society’s history or lifestyle. For example in Muslim countries, privacy and security are paramount; obviously guests are welcome into homes but only with the segregation of genders. Another point is the idea of having flexible spaces, which can also be dependant on the time, day or season. Where in the western world houses tend to have specific rooms for specific activities, there is a much greater indeterminacy with how the spaces are used in a courtyard house.


In this report and initial study, we aim to understand the key concepts of the courtyard house through precedent studies in Morocco and literature.