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DUBAI: For centuries, the courtyard was the center of Arab homes. It acted as a meeting place that was visible to all and invited social cohesion and connection. 

The courtyard can be found in design practices across the Middle East and North Africa, valued for both its social and utilitarian properties — particularly as a central channel through which air could flow and as a place of welcome and hospitality.  

However, as our cities have expanded and modernized, this ancient design feature has slowly faded from the mainstream. That is particularly pronounced in the UAE and the wider Gulf region, where skyscrapers and hyper-modern architecture have now taken precedence.  

Nevertheless, Omar Darwish and Abdulla Abbas, founders of the UAE-based design and research studio Some Kind of Practice, are leading a revival that is pushing the Emirati housh — or courtyard — back into the spotlight.  

“The Housh is not a public plaza. It’s an internally oriented world, a space that is carefully shaped and controlled from within,” Abbas told Arab News. “You don’t design a courtyard first and build around it; it happens gradually, as families grow, walls shift, and privacy needs evolve.”  

The pair are the winners of this year’s Dubai Design Week Urban Commissions competition, the theme for which was courtyards. Their winning submission — “When Does a Threshold Become a Courtyard” —sought not only to use the design language of the traditional Emirati housh, but evolve it to meet the requirements of the modern age.  

“On one hand, the disappearance of courtyards means the loss of passive systems that once made buildings climatically and socially responsive. On the other hand, it’s an opportunity to reinterpret their logic rather than replicate their image,” Abbas said. “The courtyard doesn’t need to be nostalgic; it can be flexible, fragmented, or vertical. What matters is the principle it represents: the ability to host community, regulate privacy, and mediate the climate through design. If we lose that, we lose the intelligence that made architecture here both human and environmental.”  

According to Abbas and Darwish, the housh differs from courtyards in Egypt, Syria and ����ֱ�� in its informality — differing vastly depending on which region of the country they are based in.  

“Along the coast, coral blocks and arish palm fronds provided shade and ventilation. In the desert, mud brick and arish created flexible, easily repairable enclosures. In the mountains, stacked stone walls produced compact courtyards sheltered from wind,” Darwish explained. “The housh is not a static form, it’s a system of adjustments in which material, climate, and family all need space.”  

It’s this same spirit of adaptability that the designers wished to incorporate into a new design philosophy, believing that what was important was to take some learnings from the past, without sacrificing the changing needs of human beings in the 21st century or neglecting the benefits afforded by modern construction techniques and materials.  

“It’s less about reviving a style and more about inheriting a logic: How to design with climate, with resourcefulness, and with an understanding of the social life that buildings host,” said Darwish.  

That mentality was central to the duo’s proposal for the Urban Commissions competition. The idea was to explore how the concept of the housh could be applied to modern high-rise living.  

“Instead of placing a shared courtyard at the center, we explored how each apartment could hold its own view and garden internally, without compromising the privacy of neighboring units or adjacent towers. It became about internalizing the view — creating personal courtyards within each dwelling, where openness doesn’t mean exposure,” said Darwish. “That idea directly connects to our understanding of the housh —a space that allows life to unfold inwardly, protected yet connected. It’s the same spatial logic, reimagined for the density and complexity of contemporary living.”  

For both designers the importance of the courtyard is not only its form, but what it represents: a place of peace that balances interior life with openess and privacy with hospitality.  

“What makes it special is that it’s a space of privilege and invitation. It belongs to the household. Only those welcomed in can experience it. It’s an architecture that protects intimacy while still remaining social,” said Abbas.  

The designers are optmistic that the region’s design philosphies were evolving and beginning to shift towards a growing awareness of context, rather than just imitation of global models. They both said that events like Dubai Design Week are an example of how much talent there is in the region waiting to be unleashed.  

“The goal isn’t to abandon modernity, but to ground it; to make contemporary buildings that understand their climate, their community, and their cultural memory,” said Abbas. “(We want to create) architecture that’s global in dialogue but local in intelligence.”