PRESERVING SYRIAN HOMES

Syria's stunning abandoned homes one brick at a time.

Residents of mud brick villages have been forced over time to flee their homes due to the long civil war that has been occurring in Syria. Among ruins ethnologists have found domed and vaulted mud brick dwellings that occur nowhere else on earth. There is now an effort to preserve the knowledge of constructing these houses for future generations.

“Mud walls are one metre thick — insulating against the fierce daytime heat and sub-zero winter nights.” - Hoda Kassatly, an ethnologist from Lebanese NGO Arc en Ciel.

She has published a book of collages that show the mud brick villages. Dr. Kassatly went back to those villages to observe the change over time and discovered that because there was no one living there, no one was able to maintain them; the villages have disintegrated due to erosion.

Syrian builder Issa el Khodr has build a two domed home in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.Dr. Kassatly is overseeing the construction of Issa el Khodr’s house so she can write a manual to teach others how to build these houses before the knowledge is lost.

Text by Laura Reynolds