Shahira Fahmy wins the Wallpaper* Design Award for Finest Use of Materials

Dwelling to greater than 1,000 residents in its heyday, the traditional Arabian metropolis of AlUla had been uninhabited because the Eighties, deserted when a brand new city centre was established close by. Right here, tons of of mud-brick homes, huddled round a tenth-century fortress, sat on the coronary heart of a valley in an space that’s right this moment identified for its many archaeological websites, together with the Nabataean metropolis of Hegra (Saudi Arabia’s first Unesco World Heritage Web site), the traditional capital of Dadan and the rock inscriptions of Jabal Ikmah.

Uncover Beit Bin Nouh, Saudi Arabia, by Shahira Fahmy

The outdated city is now on the centre of a heritage initiative by the Royal Fee for AlUla (RCU), which is restoring the district by cautious conservation and new cultural programmes. Throughout the advanced maze of alleyways, relationship again to the twelfth century, is Dar Tantora, a lodge that was restored in 2021 by Egyptian architect Shahira Fahmy utilizing conventional building and passive-cooling strategies.

Whereas engaged on Dar Tantora, Fahmy acquired a name from a long-term consumer, whose household is understood for his or her large-scale tasks throughout the Center East, and who needed to show a break within the outdated city into a house. ‘He advised me, you gained’t perceive something until you go to,’ she says. ‘No drawings can clarify what’s there.’ The location – a void fashioned from the remnants of two former homes – was identified domestically as Beit Bin Nouh, named after the household that had used the area as an open courtyard for gatherings.

The mud-brick homes had adopted a structure that was repeated throughout the outdated city: three rooms on the bottom flooring have been used for working, cooking and storage, and personal rooms upstairs have been for sleeping and household life. It was a easy mannequin that was formed straight by the area’s local weather and circumstances: a thick stone footing was there to face up to flash flooding; the mud-bricks, made out of native soil, clay and straw, insulated the interiors; small home windows managed warmth; slim alleys created shade; and courtyards introduced air flow.

Fahmy’s workforce carried out an in depth studying of the topography, figuring out unique flooring ranges, thresholds and circulation patterns to make sure the rebuilt constructions adopted the logic of the sooner properties. ‘It was technical, philosophical and emotional. The bricks needed to come from AlUla, and the act of constructing them connects you to the labour of those that constructed this city,’ says Fahmy, whose earlier restoration work, notably in Cairo, has formed her sensitivity to historic settings.

Each materials and design selection ties the constructing again to its surroundings and historic building strategies. Stone was sourced from quarries accepted by RCU; the tamarisk wooden beams and door frames are handled with pure oils reasonably than chemical compounds; and woven palm fronds line the ceilings to create a breathable layer. Any new infrastructure is stored outdoors the historic partitions, with pipes and wiring wrapped in palm rope, whereas the traditional qanat system of subterranean water channels was partially revived to deal with drainage and cut back water consumption.

‘The primary lesson was about sustainability,’ says Fahmy. ‘Water administration, supplies, how folks lived with this local weather. We adopted what the place was already telling us.’ In consequence, Beit Bin Nouh is a masterly instance of how earth building, when guided by the positioning itself, can carry a historic house into a recent context with out shedding its character. sfahmy.com