I listened to a social media activist comparing the geometric and architectural forms of houses in most of our Arab cities today with those of the past. The traditional old Arab house was distinguished by a beautiful architectural style full of details and warm corners, with spaciousness, windows, channels of light, colourful and varied doors, gardens, sitting areas, and more — details that have settled in the memory of many generations and been documented through poets' verse, novels, stories, and books devoted to Arab architecture and design.
He elaborated at length on old Arab houses and the human relationship with them, on the comfort those homes gave their inhabitants, and on how they were an essential component in the upbringing and collective memory of their owners, who remain loyal to their recollections, their lives, and their relationships in those houses and the neighbourhoods formed around them.
At this point I am reminded, vividly, of the magnificent novel Damascene by the Palestinian architect and novelist Suad Al Amiry, who documented the details of her family home in Damascus through a work that ranks among the finest the Arab novelistic canon has produced. The details of that house still inhabit my memory, despite the time that has passed since I read the novel — just as the details of my childhood home in the Freij Ayal Nasser neighbourhood inhabit me to this day.
The video's author continues his reflections on houses, claiming that a conspiracy has been woven against the mood, the psychology, and the Arab person's relationship with their old neighbourhoods and homes — against the architecture, the design, the details, and the identity; against the garden, the fountain at the centre of the courtyard, the engravings, the colours, the sitting areas, and more.
All of these, he argues, have been replaced by houses with no colour and no identity — no details, no projections, no engravings; white and grey uniform boxes that have left public taste vague and shapeless, and, more importantly, have left homes with no distinct character, so that every house looks the same. It brings to mind the shelters and tower blocks that the Communists built in Eastern European countries to standardise the form of architecture, erase differences, and put buildings to use in times of war.
I do not believe there is any conspiracy involved in this matter. There is no one and nothing forcing anyone to choose the general appearance of their home. The issue relates to the evolution of life, economic circumstances, the transformation of the city, and the general shift in public taste. Just as fashions in clothing, haircuts, car designs, types of food, and city planning have all changed, it was only natural that the architecture of homes would change too. People today, and the city itself, cannot bear — at least financially — the cost of those large, expansive, supremely beautiful and spacious houses.