Understanding the Performance of the Iraqi Traditional Courtyard House, Is there an Order for the Use of External Envelope Materials?
Description
Until the late decades of the nineteenth century, The Iraqi traditional courtyard house (ITCH) had ensured social, cultural, and environmental needs. Although many researchers had documented the ITCH characteristics and features, the strategy of materials use of its walls and roof slabs has not been recorded as a system or an order yet. This paper believes that the ITCH has an inherent order for its walls and roof slabs materials use. The research methodology, to explore and extrapolate this order, includes investigating and analyzing photographic and descriptive surveys of the ITCH documentations. Results reveal that the order comprises the use of the two types of components; the thick and heavy walls and roof slab with the thin and lightweight ones together simultaneously in appropriate specific positions of the ITCH. The order also expresses a harmony between the material properties of the envelope components and their exposure to the environment. Thick and heavy walls and roof slab are used in places where they are mostly shaded, whereas thin and lightweight ones are used where they are exposed to sun. The order was simulated in a diagrammatic house model.
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Data collection included a photographic survey of existing ITCH units and studies of selected bibliographies conducted by archaeologists and scholars in Iraq. The common corporeal attributes of walls and roof slabs were extracted, summarized, and some of the selected ones were presented. The characteristics of walls and roof slabs, both the light and heavyweight, were derived from the conducted surveys. The paper relied on and adopted the most frequent characteristics that obtain semi-consensus or the largest proportion of frequency for all studied samples. They reveal almost similar properties, especially for the ground and first floor external walls but with different frequencies. This paper developed a diagrammatic architectural model that simulates the order of materials use and characteristics of the ITCH external envelope.