Adaptive Use of the Courtyard in Contemporary Residential Houses

Local architecture in many countries characterized by use of the courtyard in the buildings in general and the residential houses in particular. The purpose of use was to provide environmental and aesthetic comfort as well as the distributor of the movement while providing privacy to the spaces overlooking it. Using the courtyard has been the cornerstone of residential design in Islamic and Arab countries, some aesthetic elements have been added to the interior design of the courtyard, such as water and green spaces for environmental comfort, as well as the use of decorative elements and manuscripts on the walls, with the addition of architectural elements such as Iwan and arches to provide aesthetic environment inside the space.
The research problem is the use of courtyard in modern housing has been reduced, especially after the entrance of new western structural patterns on traditional pattern (organic), and entrance of new building patterns on the local architecture, which reduce this central space to a secondary space or a group of spaces located in the back and side of the residential house only to provide lighting and ventilation. The research focuses on how to reuse the courtyard in the contemporary houses in accordance with the functional requirements and modern building techniques to give the same positive values of environmental and aesthetic comfort and increase the richness of interior design elements used in the courtyard.