Erbil Edition
Erbil Edition is an insight into the Kurdistan Region. The host and his guests discuss various topics such as history, culture, environment, travels, books, politics, past and present.
Erbil Edition
Identity and longevity in Kurdish architecture
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This episodes is a discussion with architect Sheenwar Siti about architecture in Kurdistan now and in the past, taking into account social, environmental, and economic factors.
Kakshinwar, let's uh start with this uh subject that you brought up. I like that the term, which is Duhok city where we are now, is one of the latest babies of globalization. And what do you mean by that? Does that mean Duhok is a new province, a new city, or what does that mean?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, as a city it's a new city, very much so. And much of us, many of us, we still we still refer to it as a big village. Uh because uh only a generation ago it was a village, even separated into two places. So, for example, Barushki and Greybosy were separate. There was there was forestry between it only only a generation ago. Um and so when we look at what the city's become and the sprawl, how it spread all the way to Semil and towards Nizarky on the other side as well, and we look at you know global trends and the way economy transfers across borders and uh the vast scale and speed of construction. Uh, one can only liken it to the pattern of globalism, you know, where where exchange of labor often from Turkey in recent years, for example, um has sort of sort of spilt over the border and and and cities have grown.
SPEAKER_00Is that uh because I always wonder the population of Kurdistan is does not seem to be growing or fast. But the cities grow really fast. I wonder what all these housing and expansion is for. Because I always think like we should have we should study our population then built, not create ghost towns, ghost cities.
SPEAKER_02I mean, uh excellent way of you know, excellent question as well, I think, because I mean this this always leads to business. Um and one of one of the sort of very sensitive points of uh of the economy of the residential market is is always based on creating uh a supply because people are chasing that the the the profit or the lucrative winnings of uh expanding the residential market. So whether there is a demand or not, where there is something to win in it, that and and an economy is perhaps not so much regulated, and this is across the world, uh, that that businessmen, developers, they are interested in using finding that route to sort of you know.
SPEAKER_00So they gain from the projects, from the building, from the compound, not necessarily how it's going to be occupied later on. Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_02Um, and this is a problem, this is a problem everywhere, actually, even in the UK where where I grew up. Uh people are worried that there's an oversaturation of the residential uh residential supply as well. Um and so it's very important to understand the economy of it and how it how it could affect it as well. We don't know what will happen long term. It's especially in a fast developing economy like in Kurdistan, we we don't know the potential effect of creating an oversupply. It could lead eventually, I don't know, to I'm not I'm not an expert in economic matters, but it can sometimes lead to uh a drop in value because of the oversupply. And yeah, I don't know, I don't know exactly how it could uh affect the economy of it.
SPEAKER_00But but do we keep anything uh Kurdish in all of this expansion in Herbil, in Duhok, in the Kurdistan region in general? Yes. Uh we built new houses, new apartment buildings, new parks, new roads. Uh do we keep the Kurdish style, Kurdish architecture, Kurdish elements in any way, or do we get the fastest, the cheapest, the let's say even the best material from abroad? In your own observation?
SPEAKER_02Now you're asking an architect who will never be satisfied with anything. So I'm definitely gonna say no as an architect to that question. I'm gonna say no, but um, and and I'll and I'll stick largely to the argument that it's a no. We do not consider enough what it what how we operate in daily life as Kurdish people, uh, what what the street level activity means. Like we we talk the other day, I made jokes with my aunts and said, I remember when you guys used to sit on the on the entrance of the house and watch people come by, and yeah, you know, you'd have interactions with your neighbors, and then we can sort of fast forward to the to the tower typology. Yeah, uh, so for the listeners who don't know what typology is, typology is basically a type of building in in architecture, that's the term we use for it. So the tower typology, uh, when we when we sort of copy and paste it from what we see in other western cities or developed economies can very quickly shut out uh some of these sort of cultural norms and interactions uh that we have. So if you think now we with the tower typology, the street between the the houses is the corridor with no sunlight. Yeah, yeah. It sort of immediately shuts out that interaction. I mean, that's just a very sort of uh anecdotal example of of that idea.
SPEAKER_00There was one neighborhood in New York, in Brooklyn, in New York, that I liked a lot when I was studying there, and that's because people were sitting at their doorsteps talking to their own neighbors. That reminded me of Kurdistan. So that's one of the things you say is gone here.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes, yes. The stoops of, yeah. Yes, um, I mean, and then we could go into several sort of into several sort of branches when we talk about architecture. We can talk about the materiality, for example. More often than not, we see a grey sort of glass building popping up. And and look, there's a there's a limit to what how how much a tower can address uh a local architecture, but there are many studies and there's many sort of protocols for dealing with these things. Again, uh, I grew up in the UK and um they've they very much have a way of respecting the sort of brick cityscape within towers, even. Now they don't build structurally by brick, but they but they create what we call like brick cladding. Uh and and it sort of still respects that sort of urban texture that's familiar to a past as well.
SPEAKER_00Um that that's one blends well with uh bigger picture, with the environment, with the rest of the streets and the city.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. So that leads to other things like the question of sustainability and uh even longevity.
SPEAKER_00Longevity, yeah. So uh you mentioned that earlier before we started recording, sustainability is very important in every sense. I think whether you do agriculture, where you do environmental work or build a building, sustainability is important. And how does it work out in terms of architecture, sustainability and uh longevity?
SPEAKER_02Uh there's the there's the ecological sort of uh perspective of it, in that it's good for the environment. Uh, but then there's also the idea that you're you're building a building that you won't have to uh destroy in in a in a few years or in a decade or so. Uh you're creating a building that can perform in the winter, that can perform in the summer. We have very sort of harsh summers, if we look at sort of if we compare ourselves to the West, for example. Um, and as well, we have uh a society that wants to save their spendings on energy. Yeah. So these things, if we if we look uh, if we if we consider these things and understand that to invest a little early on is important in to invest in the sustainability of a building, that can benefit us.
SPEAKER_00Why uh if someone or a a a contractor or a company or a builder, developer, let's say, does not look into the aspect of sustainability? Is it for cost reasons or is it because they don't know what what do you think is the reason? Cost reasons.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Cost reasons. Wow. 100%. And this is something that I saw even in working in offices in the UK would always be at odds with uh with the developers because the developers are trying to cut costs, they're trying to maximize profits. Yeah, of course, with a limit, it has to be a comfortable building to live in. Yeah. Uh, but ultimately, people rely on government pressure to enforce or to make compulsory, the mandatory, the respect for basic standards of sustainability, thermal performance, uh, and build just general building performance as well. And so that's because it's something that is expensive. I mean, to build a wall that is, let's say, according to LEED or Briam, which is the British standard for um, let's say sustainable building, to build a wall according to that standard, you're looking at a let a wall with about five different layers of different materials, and that that has a cavity in between it, a gap between it with insulation and it's pinned to the outer cladding in a certain way. And that's time expensive as well as well, money, like money expensive in time. But then down the road it will pay off. Of course. Yeah, of course. And I think that's something really we could, that's a direction we should really start to uh think about as well.
SPEAKER_00So with Kur when when it comes to the architecture here in Kurdistan, if we go back to history, uh I don't think we have a rich history in architecture, like Rome, let's say, or some other countries, uh, to say, let's keep in mind how we built buildings a thousand years ago or five hundred years ago. Yes. But we must keep other things in mind when we do architecture, as you said, the weather, because our summers are harsh, but winters are also very harsh. So it doesn't necessarily have to be looking into our own architectural styles of a thousand years ago, but we will have to look at our own climate, our own environment, weather patterns, especially with climate change. I think there must be a direct link between climate change and architecture. Have you seen that in your line of work? I like the keeping in mind the importance of the weather and climate.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I've had the opportunity to build some buildings in offices that I've been in across the world, some one in Switzerland, for example, a few in the UK. Uh, and I see that the difference in the way that they they specify details in their building. Um, I can't say I've lived long enough to feel climate change in a profound way. Uh, I do believe that we are affecting our planet. I do believe that uh climate change is a real and serious thing. Um, but ultimately how Kurds or how anyone can address it is by thinking in a passive way. What can we do to our building that requires us less to depend on electricity to power it or whatever whatever other resources we need that needs to be brought in from an external source? How can how can a building, uh a stationary building, perform on its own to the best that it can? You know, these things are absolutely essential for a plethora of reasons, uh saving energy being one of them, climate change being another, but also, if anything, economy of the household.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well why are we using so much concrete in Kurdistan and in Iraq? Because I know it's faster, it's cheaper, but why is there no law or regulation or someone just with their own conscience saying I'm going to build this entire complex with bricks, with um environmentally friendly, eco-friendly material? Yes. Is there any movement? Are there any regulations? Do you think are there people pushing for tougher laws? You mean to reduce the use of concrete or for different alternatives? Yeah, alternatives, exactly.
SPEAKER_02As an architect, I appreciate the plasticity of concrete and how it's easy to operate with. And we we still refer to concrete as a masonry in a masonry category, which is where stone, stone also belongs, of course, to the masonry category. And so its potential performance is almost equal to stone, if not even more uh pragmatic. Yes, especially if we treat it well and we look after it well. Um it's it's easy to use, it's easy to produce on a massive scale. Uh alternatives are steel, and then of course, if we look at in Europe, there's a there's an increase of uh timber, timber um industries. So there's what we call engineer timber, where we layer much like plywood. You've seen those thin sheets of plywood that are for sort of interior construction, but we work on it with a larger scale, so it's like thicker, thicker layers, right? This is only starting to come about. People are worried about their sort of fire safety, even though they're quite fire retardant, um, and uh also the ability to produce it on a large scale, because you you have to cut trees down, but you can grow trees back, you can't grow concrete, right? So there is, of course, a major sustainability element of it as well. When I've been in other areas in the region, such as we just we were just in Medin, for example, and I saw how much they respect the construction of stone or at least the the stone finish of a wall, and and for lower scale or lower rise buildings and lower lower rise townscapes, which we do have in Kurdistan, it would be really nice to see uh the continuance of that practice to some level as well. And then when we but when we come to larger scale building, I I'm a promoter of concrete, or not necessarily a promoter, but I'm not against it per se. I think that it sh we should use it in a way again that considers the future. It's all about, as you say, how you use it and treated. Absolutely. And concrete can be treated, it can be coloured, it can be dyed to give a certain tone that mimics or is at least respectful to colour of limestone, which is one of our most um biggest sort of stone resources that we have.
SPEAKER_00Is there also bad concrete and good concrete? Is there cheating in concrete?
SPEAKER_02Uh there is, or there's sort of negligence in how you mix the water with concrete. So on site, you should always, this is what should be done. I don't know if it's being done enough, but there's a there's a certain uh solidity that you're looking for in the concrete mix before you before you're ready to begin constructing with it. And it depends on there's there's a few things in uh in concrete. So you have cement, which is a small amount, and that's like the bonding feature of it. Yeah, then you have the largest part, which is about 70%, if I'm not, if I'm not wrong, of aggregate, which is sort of larger, larger stones, and that that sort of fills the the volume of of the concrete, right? I thought it was all cement. No, no. So I think mortar has more cement, if I'm not wrong, uh and less aggregate because you need sort of a finer, uh, a finer texture, the mortar between like brick joints and stuff like that. Uh, and then you also have sand as well, and sand has that sort of gripping, it gets into the nooks and crannies of those aggregates. So it's sort of it is the bridge between the cement and the and the aggregate as well. And then of course, water. And so amount the amount of water you use is it determines uh how ready you are to start using it as a mould. And there are there are aggregate there's aggregate and sand in certain areas that can uh have perhaps too much salt in it. I don't think we have that problem here, uh, where it can uh compromise the integrity of the concrete and things like that. But um like seawater. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, and in Kurdistan it's all fresh water. Exactly, exactly. And I think also there's another risk of taking um sand and and and aggregate from contaminated land. Perhaps if there was a brownfield site where there was previously some industries and stuff. I don't think we have a major problem there. I think I think where there may be a problem sometimes is in how much we cure the concrete. So curing is when you when you water the concrete, which is very important. Once you finish building something. Exactly. Once you fill the mould and you've taken off the panels, you have to continue watering it because the way cement dries is so rapid that it can create a crack in in the concrete. And so you have to slow that process down by constantly watering it so it dries slower. Ah, so the water is to help it dry slowly. Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I thought it s absorbs the water. No, it's to it's to dry slower so it doesn't crack. Yeah, yeah. I've seen that with my eyes. Yeah. So um there is another thing is uh uniformity in cities, for example. Because I've been to some countries and I thought like the trees, the street lights, the pavements, the buildings, everything went well together. And it was not a coincidence, I am sure. I felt that especially in Morocco. Yes. And in other countries as well. Why is it not the same here in Kurdistan? It's one building is this way, one building is that way, one is concrete, one is some uh something else. Yeah, yeah. Whose responsibility is it to usually to make sure that our cities look proper?
SPEAKER_02I mean, it's a huge, it's a question that opens up a huge discussion, but I guess we can begin to break it down into two different points. And one is we require organization, uh, and we even touched on the subject together as well. It's Kurdistan is a region that has been through a lot of historic turmoil. Uh, and that that has led to the worry of, you know, we we talked about the the Seferi culture, the culture that any moment perhaps in our subconscious, not necessarily a conscious decision, that we're ready to up and leave depending on a sudden change of situation. Yeah. Um, so that perhaps leads to a lack of priority prioritization into the civic infrastructure, such as pavements and roads and things like that, sometimes. Um, at the same time, we can see major shifts in the last 10 years, we can see major shifts in in the developments of some of these, uh, some of these areas. But then if we talk about uniformity, and I want to go back to your point about history and how you compared it, for instance, the history of Rome. And I think that's it's it sounds sort of like far-fetched actually to compare to the history of Rome, but it's an excellent comparison. And I would say that to a large extent, the the Kurdish people, I being one of the Kurdish people, need to understand that we haven't finished building our history. We we are still coming from a sort of tribal infrastructure. We're very much, we very much want to be uh people of a state, we want to be people of a nation. And so we're building towards a scale and a sort of infrastructure that is representing such. Um, and so it's very important to understand that as as we slowly build a nation, that we need to finish building our history. What does it mean now? Okay, okay, we're not necessarily all living in two-story stone houses anymore. Uh we're not maybe not everyone's sleeping on the roof anymore, maybe not everyone's hanging there. Yeah, unfortunately. Uh, but what what do those things look like? For instance, I'm trying to be as diplomatic as possible, but what why have we moved towards the uh European-style gable roof houses or the pitched roof houses? For two to three thousand years, it's the beginning of civilization, this region has been building with flat houses. That architectural feature is part of the DNA of our daily culture, aside from architecture as well. Um, so we don't respect that that is part of our day-to-day DNA.
SPEAKER_00I think that's really important as well. And uh, do you know why, for example, here historically people build flat roofs, whereas in Europe pitched roofs? Any scientific or practical reasons for it, or just one assumes.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I haven't done a sort of deep, deep dive of this, but one assumes it was the weather that Europe is generally more rainy, yeah. Whereas we have longer dry seasons here, and so there is you can hang your clothes without worrying about the rain. You can sleep on the roof without worrying about the rain, and it would generally back then have probably been a bit cooler as well. With you would also dry fruit on the roof.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Exactly. Even in my own life. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, yeah. And sleeping on the roof, you mentioned uh I think some years ago, uh, a European researcher asked me if there's one thing in the Kurdish culture you would revive that you would help the environment, what it would be. I said sleeping on the roof. There you are. Because uh, and now I I still sleep on the roof or outside every summer since I was a kid. Every summer I sleep outside. And people say, but it's too hot. And I say, if everyone went to the roof and shut down their switched off their ACs and everything, it would be cooling. Exactly. Because if you sleep on your roof and your neighbor is running an AC, of course it will be hot. Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_02So you're living out in the countryside, so yeah, how how is that for you now? That in the evenings, I'm sure it's cooler than being a summer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, as soon as the sun goes down, it's very cool and very nice. I deal with mosquitoes and but you have a mesh. I am planning to this week to start using um going to a welder to build me a new bed with some uh arch over it to put a mesh on it. Lovely, lovely. Yeah. That's brilliant. Yeah, it's amazing. And I remember uh two years ago, one day by chance I woke up around uh 4 a.m. three or four. I have never seen a night sky like that. For an hour I could not go back to sleep. I was so amazed by the clarity in the sky. And then by chance I had a telescope with me that a friend had brought from the United States. And then I tried to look at some stars, and I said no, I just put it away and looked at the stars myself. So that's one of the best benefits of sleeping on the roof. You would even observe the sky, locking yourself inside the house. That's amazing. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, we we talked as well the last time we last time we met. Uh, I was talking about how you've decided to have this uh off-grid, off-grid life. This is this is a life that many of us city folk often dream of and claim that we're going to claim that we're going to go for, but you're you're actually doing it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. As soon as you do it, then you can't go back, really. It takes just a short while to get used to it, then you will see the the difference between a city life and and and it's funny, living in uh the village or the countryside is a lot cheaper in many ways than in the city. And yet most people don't know that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And uh, as I'm curious because uh I I'm one of those people that talk about wanting to live off-grid one time, but how do you because I know you how busy you are, you've got such a packed schedule. Um how do you balance that? Do you find it easier or is it could it could it even be more convenient for you that you can you find it easier to travel around?
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, I almost every day I say to myself, I don't want to leave the village, the farm where I live. I say, okay, I'm working towards uh something where I would do everything here. But then I have to leave and come to Duhok and go to other places. But uh there's another thing that we if we cannot encourage people to go back to the countryside, for Kurds it's very easy to go back to the countryside because we all come from the village, we all have relatives and land and orchard from our grandfathers. We could at least prevent migration to the cities from the villages. Yeah. That's one thing I hope the government works on. Sure. Everyone works on, but make more life in the countryside more encouraging than discouraging. At least we could do that. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, that's an interesting way of looking at it as well. Yeah, I mean, if there are jobs, if there are like now is the harvesting season with wheat and all that, and if a farmer at the end of the harvest by the harvesting season cannot sell their produce and anything, that's you cannot encourage them to stay in the cat in the village. That's one of the things.
SPEAKER_02For sure. That's interesting. Yeah, even even our farmhouses are largely quite temporal structures as well, if we look at those. Whereas if you look in, I I mean, I I I try to not make people hate me by comparing things to Europe, but if you look at the the farmhouses in in all across Europe that they're often built of stone, very permanent, and they're some of the longest standing buildings that you find around, actually. So it would be nice to slowly shift towards a a culture where people feel partially obliged to look after their their estate in the in the in the farms and in in these sort of agricultural landscapes of Kurdistan as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, it's not uh uh it's a very good point that uh there is value, cultural value, emotional value, historical value if a house stands for 200 years or 300 years, as the ones we see, as you say, in the UK or in the US. But I have noticed here, and fortunately, and fortunately, we must admit, people here have begun to hate old things. And I sometimes joke that they don't even mind Terry cutting down a 200-year-old tree to plant a new beautiful one. Yeah, yeah. That's how it is. Oh, what is this? I have actually met people saying these houses in New York or in London are so old, they uh as if they don't know that. To devalue it, yeah. It's something new, always new ball, new house, new something. But there is a lot of value, and even older houses are a lot cooler. I noticed I was in Halabra in my sister's house the other day. Their house, her house, is a lot older than most of these new homes. It was much cooler. And I th I told her, baby, it has absorbed years of snow and cool air and all that. The new ones are a lot hotter, I think.
SPEAKER_02No, it's totally true. I mean, as well, again, we were just in Mardin and we we didn't have to turn the air conditioner on and we were south facing, the sun was hitting directly all day long, and it was cool inside. Now, admittedly, the the walls are so thick that it just wouldn't be affordable to build for most people to build a house out of such a thick, you know, thickness of stone. Um, but but it does tell you something. It tells you that if you build it your house in a certain way, that there's a way of cooling it without the need of or the need for so much reliance on energy as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. It's quite cost-effective if you spend more on the building later on you would consume less energy. Yes, it's as as simple as that. Yes. And uh so is there, do you think, uh a certain area in Kurdistan that has slightly better architectural sense than another? Uh certain. I think we could replicate, for example.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I I'm seeing really good examples here and there. Um this building. This building being one of them, of course. Um and yeah, this is an amazing. It's a great building, yeah. Yeah, uh, of course, it's it's been built with with all services in in consideration and you know, uh response to the heat outside. Um, but then in in Holir, of course, we see we're seeing some some really good stuff in in Sliomania as well, that there's quite there's quite big jumps in in architecture. Um yeah, it's about it's about to some degree understand technical detailing is a major issue here. Um the disparity between the our sort of sort of bog standard traditional style of building here, I mean traditional as in today's tradition, or not talking about 100, 200 years ago, is the is block work, and often that's it. Often it's just block work and plaster on the other side. Whereas if you think about the layers again about how to insulate a building, you have block work, um, and then insulation, uh, then you would leave a cavity and then finish it with whatever sort of cladding that you have. And you and we're beginning to see this in in some constructions around the city. That's a good thing. Yeah, so for example, an empire of seeing some nice, really nice buildings go up. Um, so that's of course a good thing. And it it what it requires is something that shouldn't be that difficult, but we need to spend the time drawing a technical drawing, which is can be quite quite complex, and then communicating it to the labor force as well, and and giving the time for them to be trained at it.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02And I think once they've built once or twice, then that's going to become a fashion. And when that becomes a fashion, it's going to be the thing that everyone expects. And when you expect it, that's it. It's if you're not doing it, you're falling behind, you know? Yeah. And it's really, I don't think it's that difficult, but uh it's we're sort of victims of the pace of economy in general, the pace of construction. We build, we build buildings faster here than than they do in Europe. Yeah. Yeah. You start a building, you design it, it starts, you start pouring the concrete brick, preparing the foundations, and it's built within a year sometimes. If the money's there and it's already, all the instalments, it gets built really fast. In the UK, it could take about three, four years.
SPEAKER_00If not, sometimes the one the system in the UK or US is blamed for being very bureaucratic. The ones that we build here fast, is it because there is no regulation or is it because there is less bureaucracy? Certainly less bureaucracy. Certainly. There I've heard that you need a committee to look at the window pane and this and that, which is good, but also slows down things. Yeah, we we have less standards, I believe.
SPEAKER_02We have less standards. Yeah, that's the unfortunate part.
SPEAKER_00Less bureaucracy, but also less standards.
SPEAKER_02And those two marry together, allow it enables us to build much faster here. And of course, then there's the many downsides to that as well. Um, and as an architect, I believe that of course we don't want to prolong the project, but the time needs to be taken to make sure all due processes are followed. Fire safety, insulation, longevity, drainage, services, concealed, you know, the design of the apartments. Here we see, for example, just the design, the layout of an apartment. I've seen so much square meters go to waste for corridors, unnecessary corridors that people are paying for. People are paying for that space. Yes, that's true, because they buy in square meters. Exactly. And this is something that we were never allowed to progress. As a young sort of person in an office, I was never allowed to sort of just submit my drawing with unnecessary corridors. They would try to minimize the corridors, maximize light coming in, views coming in, the the pragmatism of the arrangement of everything, and there's certain standards and certain ways of and techniques to get around these things. And so that's another thing as well. I mean, something that doesn't require so much technology, but to understand that we can lay out things better as well. Logic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, that's another thing. You talked about how much light comes in. And I see that's one of the unfortunate things here. Every day I see in my travels across Kurdistan, people buy these huge houses. 200 square meters is the standard here. Yes. Not a single window. Yeah. And look at here. You have you, I think a hundred lamps will not cannot be compared to a tiny bit of sunlight. Absolutely. It's no cost, it's healthier to get sunlight. Absolutely. Daylight. I don't understand why people don't build windows here. And if they have windows, they never curtain. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. Daylight is very important. Or also older Kurdish houses. I remember my own family house, my uncle's house. We used to joke that you wouldn't dare to go open the door for someone at night because between your living quarters and the main door was a huge yard. You had to walk through it. And now everything goes into houses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They will park the car outside. There is barely enough room for one single plant, maybe, or their shoes. I don't know why. Yeah, because I if I were to build 200 square meters, I would 60 meters of houses, housing, and the rest front yard. That goes into the cooling and the sustainability.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, absolutely. So with areas that have been built up in concrete, your arch nemesis concrete is uh it you now I'm sorry, I now I'm beginning to like it because I've only heard negative things about concrete.
SPEAKER_00But the way you say that, the way you deal with it, treat it, know how to use it now, I've changed my mind because you are the expert.
SPEAKER_02Oh, thank you. But yeah, I mean, there's there is negative connotations with the environment because it it requires also the use of some alloy as well, and that there's even some metal in concrete as well at times, and that that can be damaging. But yeah, I mean, if you use it properly, there's ways of mitigating the damage that it does. But yeah, when we build too much with a concrete, or let's say we've created too much concrete surface in a neighborhood, you create a heat island, and especially in a place like this. We need that that tree space. We need the space for greenery, which offers cooling, it offers shade. It's just the the the benefits of it are difficult to calculate, they're so beneficial. The oxygen, uh the way it cools the area, the way it encourages movement, walking, yeah, for God's sake. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Spending your own time in your own garden, basically.
SPEAKER_02I mean, what if we had a tree line from here that went 50 meters and then round the corner to the closest shop?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But now we most of the time people drive to the shop. Yes. Most people drive to the shop. Yeah. Or they or they go and get the person who's there, who's their designated driver to go and get the carriage.
SPEAKER_00I've seen people drive the most, the latest, most expensive car to go get bread around the corner. Exactly. Walk.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Um and there's places where people enjoy the walk, they enjoy that moment out just to sort of gather their thoughts. And perhaps we need to do work to provide a space in the street which encourages someone to enjoy the walk to the shop. Yeah. You know, maybe see a friend on the way and come back.
SPEAKER_00Is it uh possible, uh engineering-wise or architectural-wise, to build old Kurdish mud houses, stone and mud with thatched roofs and wood and all that, but in a modern way? Because I always wonder, and I've seen other people ask, can we build houses like that, but that would last longer, let's say 50 years longer? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I would say yes. I would say yes. How how practical it is, and on what scale that we can afford to build that on, is another question. But especially with because of technology, we can better protect those kind of structures as well. Uh, it might be more affordable to build with mud, maybe. I haven't done a study on it, but with it's the way we sort of treat the ex the external face of the house as well, and how we deal with the drainage. If the water is consistently draining off the face of the wall, which is what happens.
SPEAKER_00That's why they they they run down. Yeah. Water basically falls on the roof, exactly, trickles down the walls. Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_02So, I mean, this is another so for instance, for instance, one major problem we had historically actually is having to constantly roll the big rolling pin over the over the roof to compress the the matter on the roof and to stop the water seeping in. I mean, this, let's say, on a larger scale of a country that wants to be a nation might be difficult as uh as an approach to to ensure that houses are maintained, but there's there's easily an alternative for something that looks similar to it.
SPEAKER_00And you know, there's the the blue tarp, which is very common now in Kurdistan. Yes, that that's the solution. That's the s exactly. And from the sky, they all look like swimming pools.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Exactly. And it's funny, actually. I mean, that blue tarp, it's ugly, but in in modern roof buildups and wall build-ups, you will find an alternative to that blue tarp somewhere inside the wall. Some sort of damp proof membrane or something that protects in in a very high spec house, you'd see a few of those layers actually. And they're sort of hidden underneath it. You won't see it, but it's there to protect it long term. So there's a reason behind those things, but there's ways of dealing with it, and we have to value uh our townscapes and cityscapes in order to, you know, pressure, pressure people building, pressure, even locals building their own house to do it the proper way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you mentioned something earlier that which I really uh agree with, and it's that Kurdistan, the Kurdistan region is very new as a nation, of course. We're old. And uh I remember when I did a video about the Cumberland house here, saying that it was built 40 years before Duhok became a province. Yes. Someone has commented saying, you know, how can you disregard this people's history and blah blah. He thought that I had said this house is older than the Kurdish people, than all of Kurdistan. So uh what I was going to say is that the Kurdistan region as an autonomous region is new and we are only building, starting to build roads and all that. And I think this is always the time for the nation to be careful about how they build things before it's too late. It's like a baby. And one thing that worries me, I hope it doesn't happen happen here, is slums and shanty towns. I think there are some sort of it in around Erbil and some other places. Even in Duhook, we really, yeah. It's it's very important not to let that happen because even the government of Brazil cannot solve the problem of shanty towns. Yes. Or in some other country. So those things where the way you build, the way you uh start things, it's better to keep in mind things in the very beginning before it's too late, right?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely critical. I totally agree. I totally agree. And that's my biggest worry. And I call the hook one of the latest babies of modern of globalism, but uh it and that's one of the biggest threats as well, is that we're growing so fast that we can't expect anyone to be able to regulate all of that. You know, it's really it's a very, very tough job that that the civic infrastructure and civic people working in in various areas of government that have to deal with have to deal with these very fast changes, but we're facing it nonetheless, and we have to be careful about the way we build the roads, yeah, um, and the way we build our towns, and exactly avoiding uh things like or trying to trying to prevent things like shanty towns and things like that as well. Um it's it's absolutely essential. It's absolutely essential.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh especially I think for to solve that, uh, I'm sure there are committees, government departments that you would go to as a developer to approve your things, but they must be a lot tougher than real architects, engineers, not just some government employee to stamp your paper. Someone who would love the city that they regulate.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely critical is critical. We have to be tough on it. That's the only way. That's the only way. And I think I think Kurdish people could be receptive to that, you know? We're people that when the rules are there, we follow, we follow the rules, I've noticed. When the rules being enforced, or we or the rules put there, we follow the we follow the rules. So I do believe that we have the capacity to to establish a better system for uh the built the built environment as well.
SPEAKER_00The nickname of Duhuk, I think in Kurdistan, as in many other countries, each city has its own nickname. For Duhuk, is it Rangin, right? Duhuka Rangin. It means colourful. Yes, exactly. Where do you think that comes from? The nature or the city or the people? I think it's the nature. Uh I think it's the nature, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that leads us to another big discussion, you know. But Duhuk is one of the cities, let's say, that is associated closely with uh its its natural quality of its nature. And again, this this this sort of uh brings it back to how we how we treat our built environment. When we sell plots of land, are we selling them with with uh a set standard of garden in mind? Is that enough, for example? Our gardens we and parks, which we're actually we're starting to see some major major projects on parks, which is nice. Um, but these things are absolutely essential. This is what brings value, even tourism to Duhuk is the nature. Yeah, it's true. And so we have to be absolutely uh critical and and very sensitive to the preservation of how do we keep that label? Yeah, because that's why that's why people love Duhuk when they talk nicely about Duhuk. It's it's the nature, it's the fact that we're between two mountains, we're not close from a drive off into some somewhere more secluded near water or trees or under the shade and up and up the valley, down the valley, sort of romantic ideas, exactly.
SPEAKER_00I have the same issue with uh halabja. I'm from Halabja and it's a new province, it's even newer than Duhok. And uh as a province, uh area-wise, also population, it's very small. And then I've seen even recently my own brother, including others, uh complain that it's not developing fast enough, no one cares about halabjah. And I said, no, please let's keep it better. Believe me, it's so tiny as a province. If it accelerated towards development, we would have no space left. And yet, like Duhok, halabjah is known for its greenery, for its nature. So that's your selling point. Yeah, don't turn it all into uh buildings and all that. Yeah, that's one thing to keep in mind. Once you lose the nature, all these tourists we get, they might come for lunch into Duhok or for a hotel, but the rest of the time they come for the natural landscape.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. I mean that that's probably where the economy of Halabchat, if as much as possible, should move in in the direction of tourism, but for nature, right? Absolutely. And that and that starts with how you how you deal with plots of land, what's the basic standard of how how we treat the streets and growing trees, and you know, those things are you know absolutely you can't quantify the value of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I always like uh I'm very happy when I come to Duhok and when I study in my own climate work and research. Duhok is the greenest province of Kurdistan, the greenest area. Second is Halabjah. And last week uh a friend from the Board of Environment gave me a book written in 1926 to 1946, uh studying, surveying all the forests and greenery in Kurdistan. And even then, halabjah is also one of the greens. Wow, wow. And Dahook the same way. So I hope we keep it that way. Absolutely. No matter what we I hope we try to limit our city expansion and expand our nature. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean, and and and then and then of course, so again, one is about being able to breathe fresh air and to look to make it look beautiful. But again, to create shade is to create a a ground level that's walkable, that that invites you to interact with others. It has so many, it affects so many factors of life. Um, and and as an architect, we we we think about community, we think about uh interactions and the way people sort of uh operate on the on the ground level, you know. A horizontal, horizontal, I would say that there's many uh formats of drawing, but the the plan, which is the one with the sort of top-down one, is the most important because it represents the horizontal way that that we live and that to have a tree on that ground and to appreciate that the one-to-one connection, you know, is so is so important.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so very much. This was really enjoyable at Shinoir. I learned so much from you.