Team: Dr Sura Al-Maiyah, Dr Hamed Samir
Duration: 24 months starting from 1 April 2024
Climate Change, Old Basra Traditional Architecture
Traditional historic architecture offers inspiration for communities and professionals alike, particularly in the current era of climate emergency. Historic buildings satisfied occupants’ comfort without relying on the massive use of energy-consuming solutions. In most cases, the use of local craftsmanship and construction techniques resulted in beautifully crafted, and environmentally responsive buildings. Such a wealth of solutions has lost its relevance in contemporary architecture largely replaced by standardised alternatives.
The Climate Change, Old Basra Traditional Architecture project set out to reassert the value of this knowledge by studying traditional buildings in order to better understand how their design responded to Iraq’s particular social and environmental contexts. By assessing the performance of historic buildings and documenting their design strategies, the project has worked to identify lessons for contemporary architecture and planning, and to support more suitable approaches to sustainable building.
The project’s focus is on Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, where some of the country’s extraordinary traditional architecture is located, namely the famous shanasheel houses. The fluid political climate affecting the city since the early 2000s has severely damaged its historic precinct and weakened the confidence of its community in their heritage. This is common to many cities situated in conflict zones, which are yet to find scenarios to revive their history and heritage. The project will set a precedent for cities in conflict zones thus changing the narrative on heritage conservation in the Middle East and beyond.
Project Achievements
The project has, to date, achieved significant progress in documenting, analysing, and sharing knowledge of Basra’s traditional architecture. In April 2025, the project team carried out extensive field documentation of shanasheel houses and other heritage buildings across the city. This work included the collection of cloud point data through 3D laser scanning of the Basra Antiquities and Heritage Inspectorate building in the historic al-Ashar district, a 360-degree photogrammetry survey and laser scanning of a second case study, ‘House H’, and an extended section of one of the old city’s most compact residential streets.
Community and academic engagement formed another cornerstone of the project. In January 2025 the team held a two-day webinar on the use of innovative technologies for surveying activities in heritage contexts. Delivered by the team at the University of Salerno, and led and organised by Loughborough University project lead and the University of Basra team, the workshop was attended by over 140 participants. Over the course of the two days, the project team explored the synergy between cutting-edge digital technologies and heritage preservation, focusing on advanced surveying techniques for historic buildings. Beyond promoting the project’s research activities, the event expanded the team’s network of stakeholders in Basra and across Iraqi universities.
Building on the momentum of this workshop, a number of University of Basra students and alumni were subsequently involved in hands-on surveying of shanasheel houses. A second engagement and training event is also scheduled for autumn 2025. Alongside this outreach, the project team continue to contribute to academic discourse through conference presentations and planned forthcoming research publications.
Upon final refinement and analysis of the survey data, the project team will deliver a co-created toolkit for local architects, engineers and residents, intended to support better design of retrofit interventions for traditional residential buildings. The platform will be both a vehicle to help residents regain trust in the peculiarity of their heritage and an instrument to pursue sustainable heritage conservation practices. It will include visualisations showing how historic houses perform in terms of solar control and visual efficiency, and will provide a range of detailed structural and functional solutions to guide rehabilitation works. In doing so, it will support heritage conservation practices that respect communities and reflect the social habits embedded in the use of these buildings.
