Report|Sustainable Architecture of Nassief House|Balad: 2019 June 27
As one of Jeddah season’s activities in 2019. Cultural nights were held at Albalad – historical Jeddah ─ taking various creative disciplines into account such as art, architecture, theatre and music. The interesting coincidence is the talk was about sustainable architecture of Nassief house and it was hosted inside Nassief House by Dr. Noura Ghabra.
The talk discussed the main pillars of sustainable design, it defined it in a specific scientific manner and compared all sustainability parameters to Nasif’s house at its time! The sustainability terminology is considered as a new term according to Dr.Noura. It started in 1980s and the term reached the highest search word in 2008. Though, Nasif house was meeting most of these parameter based on its research and experiments. One of them was testifying the comfort zone and micro climate at the house in the worst case scenario ─ August, July ─ during a year, and the diagrams shows a very acceptable results compared to sustainability standards.
The question that matters after showing this result was how did this house reached this level of delight and comfort hundred years ago, nevertheless Jeddah’s stubborn harsh climate?!
The answer was by applying many techniques such as passive cooling which was taught by try and error, inherited generation by generation. Mashrabia / Roshan was one of the main effective factors of passive cooling as well as the organic orientation of urban layout towards the prevailing north winds. The building materials ─ coral stone ─ played a major rule as well, by absorbing humidity and release it, to control the micro climate of the house. Additional to that, the life style of inhabitant was changing during different seasons, following the comfort zone by relying on temperature and wind breeze in different levels of the house.
The lecture was arranged by ZAWYA 97 at Nasif’s house in the center of historic Jeddah. A new creative platform consider itself as a departure of arts, crafts, and design.
Abdulrahman Aljohani
Jeddah, June 27, 2019
Sustainable Architecture of Nassief House
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