Excerpt: Sunlit Yearning Home by Hanan Salameh symbolizes the residents’ love for nature, pottery, and farming, highlighting their deep connection to their environment. The design philosophy emphasizes creating a residence that evolves naturally over time, responding to the land and its inhabitants’ lives. Each curve and enclosure feels like a part of the house, adapting to new functions, memories, and needs, ensuring a lived-in, modern, and rooted home.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] Finding a Name: The name “Sunlit Yearning Home” perfectly captures the essence of this project, reflecting the warmth and light that permeate the space. It symbolizes the couple’s aspirations and love for nature, pottery, and farming, as well as their deep connection to the environment around them.
Location: Located in the olive farm region of Irbid, Jordan, the home is set within a rural landscape that influences its design. The surrounding environment, with its agricultural roots, plays a key role in shaping the house, connecting the couple’s lifestyle to the natural world.
Understanding Existence: In designing the home, the concept of “existence” goes beyond physicality—it involves connecting the space to the lives of its inhabitants and the land. The design was created to feel timeless, as though it has grown naturally with the environment over the years, reflecting the couple’s evolving needs. This understanding of existence ensures that the house isn’t just a shelter, but a living, breathing extension of its context.
Design Philosophy & Shaping the Lines: The design philosophy centers on creating a home that evolves naturally over time, shaped not by rigid lines but by an organic process that responds to the land and the lives of its inhabitants. Every curve and enclosure in the design feels like it belongs, transforming over time to adapt to new functions, memories, and needs. This approach ensures the house feels lived-in and rooted, while still modern and forward-thinking.
The Courtyard in Arabic Culture: The courtyard is an essential element in Arabic architecture, balancing outdoor living with the cultural value of privacy. In “Sunlit Yearning Home,” the courtyard acts as a central organizing space, allowing for a seamless indoor-outdoor experience while preserving the cherished sense of seclusion and intimacy in line with Arabic traditions.
Reflective Coating Material: The use of white local stone coated with a reflective material serves both aesthetic and functional purposes. It enhances the distribution of natural light throughout the house, creating a bright, welcoming atmosphere in every space. This reflective coating also harmonizes the interior with the external environment, ensuring that light flows freely between the inside and outside.
The Story of the Couple: The home tells the story of a young couple whose lives are closely intertwined with nature and craftsmanship. One partner works on the farm, while the other creates pottery. The design reflects these dual passions, with spaces that allow the farmer to easily transition from outdoor work to relaxation, while the rooftop pottery studio provides a peaceful retreat for creativity, illuminated by natural light.
How the House Works Day and Night: During the day, the house is bathed in sunlight, with reflective surfaces and natural ventilation ensuring comfort and brightness. The design of the building envelope keeps the heat at bay, while the thick walls maintain a stable internal temperature. At night, the interior takes on a warm, tranquil atmosphere, with lighting carefully designed to enhance the reflective qualities of the materials. The courtyard becomes a private retreat under the stars, extending the home’s usability into the evening.
Services Integrated in the Walls: The services—plumbing, electrical, and ventilation—are carefully integrated into the thick walls of the house. This allows the technical aspects of the home to be discreet, maintaining the clean, organic aesthetic of the design without disrupting the natural flow of the space.
Landscape Design: The landscape is minimal within the home’s boundary, as too much greenery would absorb light. Instead, the focus is on the rooftop garden, where greenery is incorporated to enhance the connection to the surrounding olive farms. This design approach ensures a balance between enjoying nature and maintaining a well-lit, open living environment.
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