Vol :37 Issue No.1 2012 - Open House International

Khaled Galal Ahmed
open house international Vol.37 No.1, March 2012 A ‘Fareej-in-the-Sky’: Towards a Community-oriented Design...
Figure 9. The configuration of the Habitat Model (Source: Jan and Norr Group 2009).
THE ‘FAR EEJ’-IN-THE-SK Y: INTEGRA T-
ING LOCA LITY IN THE DEB ATE
The vertical arrangement of the local urban housing
pattern of the traditional fareej is proposed here
as the answer for the reconciliation between locality
and globalism in the question of community-oriented
high-rise buildings in the UAE. The fareej is
the smallest unit of the traditional Emirati settlements.
It is a housing system composed of a group
of houses large enough to accommodate an
extended Emirati family clustered around a courtyard
or a park (Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council
2010). This pattern reflects the very high importance
of the family relationship, which is still vibrant
(Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council 2010). As a
recognition for its current relevancy, the idea of the
fareej has been adopted in the futuristic housing
plans of the UAE. Al Ain 2030 Urban Structure
Framework Plan, as an example of this trend, has
acknowledged the fareej as the basic local housing
pattern. In this Urban Plan, the plots are to be allocated
so that extended families share the central
courtyard, giving them the proximity to one another
that they need. Privacy is ensured by the cul-desac
entrance that keeps out through traffic (Fig.
10). Fareejs are grouped together into ‘Local
Clusters” arrayed around a small central park complex
(Fig. 10). The catchment area is sufficient to
support a kindergarten or a childcare facility, an
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outdoor play space and a local mosque. All of the
streets surrounding a cluster are local streets with
traffic calming. Local clusters are aggregated
together into “Neighbourhoods” with a population
of eight to ten thousand people. This is the catchment
area for two single-sex primary schools, a
Friday mosque, a park, and a women’s center.
Local shops and higher density housing round out
the needs of the neighborhood (Fig. 10) (Abu
Dhabi Urban Planning Council 2009).
The key elements of a fareej are the courtyard
house, sikka and baraha (Fig. 11). The courtyard
house is built to the edge of the plot to maximize
the use of land and to define the public realm.
Despite the shift that happened between the courtyard
public housing models of the seventies and
eighties in the UAE and the currently applied extrovert
compact houses (SZHP 2010 and MRHE
2010), there is a call in Abu Dhabi 2030 Plan (Abu
Dhabi Urban Planning Council 2009) to return to
the courtyard house pattern. The courtyard house is
an ancient Arab form that works well in this region
because it responds to the environmental challenges
as well as the unique set of social requirements
of the people. It is a covered outdoor space
for the family to sit in the shade and enjoy the
breezes that are created as a result of these simple
passive design techniques that are both sustainable
and responsive to the climate. Besides providing
privacy, the design of the courtyard house is flexible