Abstract

It is acknowledged that the courtyard house is one of the most important types of vernacular housing in the world, especially in the Arab countries. However, the use of courtyard house has not excluded on the vernacular architecture in the twentieth century, modern architects in their latest work tried to rediscover this type again. This paper discusses this rediscovering, and clarifies different ways of adapting vernacular concepts of courtyard houses to produce a modern one. Modernists combined the historical authenticity of this type with the requirements of modern life as well as with the modern methods of design and construction. Three famous ways of modernizing the courtyard house are clarified in this paper, in order to discover influences of vernacular concepts on the modern movement as well as tools of developing this type in the modern architecture. The paper concludes that the courtyard house as a type has passed several stages of modernization: simulation, integration, and transformation. In all these stages, the ability of the courtyard house to keep up with the times and achieve a remarkable success in modern architecture is observed. Therefore, it is possible to modernize the courtyard house in line with keeping qualities found in the vernacular architecture. As a result, this encourages architects around the word to keep discovering new ways of adapting this type to the contemporary needs.

Keywords: Courtyard house; Housing design; Modern architecture; Vernacular housing