Extreme Urbanism: A View on Afghanistan, Session 2Session 2: Traditional Architecture and Urbanism in Afghanistan

Seminar Transcript

Until recently, Afghanistan was omnipresent in global news for the past two decades for all of the wrong reasons. As part of the Option studio, Extreme Urbanism VII: Imagining an Urban Future for Ishkashim,

offered at the Harvard GSD in the fall of 2020, this workshop/lecture series aims to propose to interested audiences the opportunity to get an updated, informed view on the country.

Addressing primarily architectural, urban, and territorial aspects of Afghanistan, this cycle of talks aims to create a platform where varied topics ranging from vernacular architecture and building traditions to

infrastructure and cultural specificities are discussed in conjunction with issues related to historic settlements and contemporary planning in Afghanistan. The speakers will include academics from Harvard University

and Kabul University, in addition to global experts, and practitioners working in or on Afghanistan.

Chair Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Assistant Professor of Urban Design, Harvard Graduate School of

Design

Speakers Ayaz Hosham, Faculty, Architecture Department, Kabul University Sofia Sahab, Former Lecturer, Urban Design and Planning Department, Kabul University Abdul Wasay Najimi, Architect and Conservator, Aga Khan Trust for Culture

BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION:Chelsea Ferrell: Hello and welcome to today's seminar, which is the second in our series on ‘Extreme Urbanism: A View on Afghanistan.’ Today's topic centers around ‘Traditional Architecture and Urbanism in Afghanistan.’ I'm Chelsea Ferrell, the Assistant Director of the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University.

The mission of the institute is to engage through interdisciplinary research to advance and deepen the understanding of critical issues relevant to South Asia and its relationship with the world. Before we get started, we have a couple of housekeeping items for today. During the question and answer session, you can submit questions directly to the moderator by the Q & A function on Zoom.There will be a short survey automatically sent to you at the end of the session, we would ask that you kindly fill this out. Finally, today's session will be recorded.

Without further ado, I'd like to introduce the moderator of today's panel: Dr. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes . Charlotte is an architect, scholar, and Assistant Professor of Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She holds a PhD from ETH Zurich on the effects of the political economy of food on the built environment, case study Egypt. Charlotte's teaching and research interests are related to how struggling communities can gain greater access to resources, the mainstream economy, better governance, and ecological and social justice.

She co-authored Housing Cairo and Cairo Desert Cities by Ruby Press in Berlin. She's a founding member of the Parity Group, a grassroots association committed to improving gender equality in architecture. Dr. Malterre-Barthes, thank you so much for being with us today.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes: Thank you very much Chelsea for this great introduction and I have indeed the honor to moderate the second session of our extreme urbanism series. Today the panel on traditional architecture of Afghanistan, co-hosted by the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asian Institute and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. This event is born out of the option studio ‘Extreme Urbanism: Imagining an Urban Future for Ishkashim,’ offered at the Harvard GSD in the fall of 2020, initiated by Professor Rahul Mehrotra that I have the pleasure to co-instruct with.

So, this series aims to propose to interested audience in the opportunity to get an updated, informed view on the country and we already have behind us the first session ‘Planning for Urban Afghanistan,’ and on October 24 we'll be hosting a third and last panel ‘Contemporary Architecture and Urbanism in Afghanistan.’

Before jumping at the heart of the matter and introducing our speakers, we would like to thank, of course, the Lakshmi Mittal and Family Southeast Asia Institute, and it's a fantastic team Meena, and so many, Chelsea, thank you very much. And then the name of the Agha Khan Agency for Habitat, which is also the partner of our studio at Harvard. In Afghanistan, we'd like to thank the Ministry of Urban Development and Land, and in particular Ms Sahar Hamdard, who’s been lecturing our students and has been extremely helpful, the Directorate of Urban Development and Land of Badakhshan, the Municipality of Ishakshim and the District Governor of Ishkashim, as well as Kabul University, who is also our partner for the studio.

So, with this session what we hope is to get an outlook on to traditional architecture and urbanism in Afghanistan, on vernacular and building traditions, on question of maintenance and preservation of historic settlements. And we are very happy and delighted to have our speakers today, Sofia Sahab, Ayaz Hosham, and Abdul Wasay Najimi. And I would like to start by introducing our first speaker, which is Sofia Sahab.

Sofia Sahab is a former lecturer at the Department of Urban and Planning, she holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Kabul University, and Masters and PhD in Planning from Nagoya Institute of Technology in Japan. She joined the Architecture Department of Kabul University in 2010 as the first female instructor and transferred to the newly established Urban Design and Planning Department in 2018 to become then the first head of these departments for a year. Dr. Sahab also works for the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing as an urban regeneration specialist.

So, with that Sofia, the floor is yours. I will then introduce each of the speakers prior to their talk, and just one short point, I will be taking questions by chat in written form. So please, do feel free to to formulate your question and send them during the entire session. So with no further delay, I leave the floor to Sofia.

Sofia Sahab: Thank you very much for the nice introduction. Can you see my screen?

Mittal Institute: Yes, looking good.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes: Yes.

Sofia Sahab: I'm Sofia Sahab, former member of the Department of Urban Design and Planning and today I'm going to present about Gozar: Afghanistan's traditional neighborhood. This is the outline of my today's presentation. First, I'd like to talk about the traditional Gozars, the characteristics of these Gozars, and then about the current or their urbanized Gozars, and then I will present about my own research that I have done during my Master's and PhD and now also. It includes the special features of Gozars and also the functions of Gozars that was a questionnaire survey with representatives and online discussion system.

First, about the traditional Gozars. The term ‘Gozars’ literally means pass or passage. Gozars are centuries-old traditional neighborhoods found in Kabul City and other cities of Afghanistan and unfortunately, we do not have much literature about the Gozars. And as my research has been about the Gozars in Kabul City, so I generally talk about the characteristics of Gozars in Kabul City that might be very similar to other Gozars in like Herat City or Mazari Sharif, but it might have some differences.

So, my research is on the Gozars in Kabul City. Before we had master plans or any plans for Kabul City, we had such kind of divisions like Kabul was divided into ‘Mahals,’ it was like the districts. Now, we call this as municipal district, a ‘ward’ and the Gozar that is kind of neighborhood or community and that was also called as Mahal. Mahal is also called in as neighborhoods in neighboring countries like Iran, Uzbekistan, and Turkey. And also, we had such kind of divisions like Kocha, it is a street or alley.

So, it doesn't mean here that these divisions, one division were the main division or the other is the subdivision because we don't have literature on these things but Gozars and Mahals sometimes used interchangeably, and Gozar and Kocha also used interchangeably. So, we have such kind of divisions in Kabul City, but we do not have much information or literature about it. The main characteristics of these Gozars were they had or they were led by a representative or Wakil, we here call them as Wakil and they included or was organized around the religious building or mosque. And they also included a school, this religious building was also kind of a school and included retail shops and market, and they also included spaces for the community. And the one thing that was very strong in these Gozars were the social ties among its residents and the Gozar representative that these social ties brought up mutual aid, social and physical order in them. And the thing that was more common in these Gozars were the common guild among their residents in Gozars.

In the name, like in this slide, I'm going to present about the names of these, like the names of each Gozar, each Gozar had a name and most often the name represented the common guild of the residents in the

Gozar, like we had Gozar-e-ahangari, its translation is forging Gozar or soap-making Gozar, or other straw sales Gozar. And they were also named after popular and influential people who once inhabited in the Gozar or according to particular areas or certain geographical landmarks in the Gozars.

About the current characteristics or the current urbanized Gozars, they are currently institutionalized as sub-districts of municipal district or municipal governments. They are also represented by a representative, this is a must, not written anywhere but they should have a representative, and they include mosques.

When I had the survey, one Gozar had even 10 mosques, one had one mosque, but there were no Gozars without them. This area is used, mosque is used for the information sharing by Gozar representative and they have set or customary boundaries. The sizes are quite different, very large sizes, we have very large sizes of Gozar and small size of Gozar. And in a district, it ranges from one to 110. Usually, there are 500 to 1000 houses in a Gozar and the citizen charter suggest 1000 to 1250 households for each Gozar.

So why a Gozar is important, you know that over 70% of Kabul City’s urban fabric is informal and they are recognized by the municipality by their Gozar organizations. So it's kind of a formal bridge for municipality to informal settlements. They play a very important role in the local governance of informal settlements. Wakile-Gozars or the Gozar representatives act as a conduit of information between Gozar residents and municipality. They are also responsible for certifying documents births, marriages and deeds. Gozar representatives are working as volunteer, but their responsibilities are kind of formal responsibility. So, this is kind of making Gozars as a formal urban governance unit, municipal governance unit.

This is my research about Gozar. First, I had a Gozar spatial feature survey, and functional survey with Gozar representatives and other Gozar functions survey with the residents. The first one is about Gozar spatial features survey of four districts and that included 124 Gozars. I used the maps that were in the District Office and also it was shared by to me and I draw those Gozar boundaries in the area maps and measure the area and the number of houses in the Gozars. And this is the summary of those findings, we can see that we have very large Gozars in terms of area and number of housing units or population, and very small ones too. So, the Gozar size is not like formalized to 500 or 600 houses, the range is very large.

My second survey was about Gozar functions. It was a questionnaire survey with Wakile-Gozar. I surveyed four districts that are shown in this map, and 82 Gozars. These four districts had 124 Gozars, but we had sent questionnaires surveys to 82 Gozar representatives. And the main contents of these questionnaires surveys was neighbor characteristics, neighborhood functions and effectiveness of Gozars. These are the photos of the questionnaires, during my questionnaire survey. As you can see that all Wakile-Gozars were male, we didn't have a female representative. Now, I think we have one or two things representatives too back at that time, there were no female representatives and age of the most Wakile-Gozars were higher than 50. The literacy was also not very high. We had illiterate Wakils also and the Wakils’ duration of being a representative for even more than 20 years and the younger ones were the son of those Wakils that had passed away and their son had become the Wakile-Gozar.

So, this was the functions that I had surveyed and this shows the results that which functions according to the Gozar representatives work well in the Gozars and which functions does not work well. And here we can see that some functions like traditional events, holding recreational activities, all these things does not work very well, not work anymore in the Gozars, but some functions like the governance functions work quite well in the Gozars. Also, we had these areal characteristics of Gozars and activeness of Gozars, and seeing whether these are related to each other, I did some statistical tests and this is a short summary of those tests. The neighborhood functions were not affected by the population size or the Gozar establishment period, but it was related to the settlement type and Gozars with formal settlements had better functions. These functions written here. And so, this indicates that a formalization or spatial arrangement and is likely to enhance neighborhood functions of Gozars.

This is my third survey here, I did it this year from May 12 to May 29. We use an online discussion system that is called Collaborate, with the collaboration of Kabul University and also Nagoya Institute of Technology. We covered all the districts of Kabul City, and we asked the residents to, residents, Wakile-Gozars, and everyone, to participate. We had 800 participants and as our system was facilitated by AI and operated by AI. The AI, it classified the opinions into issues, ideas, merits, and demerits. And I don't like to discuss a lot about this, it’s not published yet and my time is also I think over but we had three teams in this survey, Gozar general functions, we asked the residents to talk about what functions generally Gozars now have and what were the working well functions and what are solutions to not working well functions. So, this was kind of like, we wanted to know the Gozar functions from the residents’ point of view because we had them from their representatives point of view, but also we wanted to enhance the neighborhood social functions of Gozars by soft methods of participation.

This is a user interface of our online discussion system, and that was all. At the end, I ’d like to say that as a conclusion that we should consider Gozars as a very important social socially or physical neighborhoods or governance units, and we should consider in each plan, whether it's a master plan or detailed plan or any other plans of Kabul City. So, thank you very much. This was my presentation.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes: Thank you Sofia for your presentation, and as I mentioned earlier, we will be taking questions by chat. So, if you have any question for Sofia Sahab on her presentation or, more generally, please do that. So, I would now like to introduce our second speaker Ayaz Hosham.

Ayaz Hosham is a lecturer at the Department of Architecture and Design in Kabul Engineering Faculty. Before completing his Master's from Hiroshima University in 2019, he worked as an Assistant Architect for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. And since 2019 he's also working as a Sustainable Architecture Specialist for the Office of the Senior Advisor of the President for Transportation Affairs. And he's a practicing architect who recently established his studio in Kabul, a studio called NOQTA, which means point in Farsi. So, Hosham please, the floor is yours, and you may share your screen.

Ayaz Hosham: Thank you very much, Professor Charlotte. I would like to start my presentation. So, good evening, and good morning everyone. I’d like to thank the Harvard GSD program, Kabul University, and Lakshmi Mittal Institute for this opportunity. So what happens is that 50 years ago professors from Harvard University and Kabul University, they did some research and they published one of the most fundamental texts in the domain of the indigenous architecture of Afghanistan. That book, together with the publications from Professor Qasimi, Professor Mirzai and Dr. Najimi, who is also who is also joining the panel today, are the fundamental text regarding the traditional architecture for those who want to study in this field. After that there were some articles published, but not —.

So, on the other hand, what's happening now around the globe is the issue of global warming, climate change, and the role of the built environment, and this man made catastrophe. So, and a lot of studies are going on in the vernacular architecture and they are looking at the vernacular. They are looking at the vernacular architecture to find passive technologies and then to introduce that into the contemporary architecture in order to reduce the energy consumption. So what we did was to add another layer to the study that was carried out 50 years ago. And to study one of these houses, which is the Kabul courtyard houses and to find out the passive and low energy heating and cooling techniques and to introduce it for the contemporary architects to have a sense of regional character, and also to reduce the energy consumption when they are designing the buildings.

So today, I will talk about the environmental sustainability in the vernacular architecture andalso, I will talk about the courtyard houses of Kabul and my research in Hiroshima University. So, Afghanistan has witnessed a lot of empires actually, we have experienced expansion and contraction at the same time. We have hosted several types of several dynasty civilizations and empires and sometimes we have nurtured these empires. So, for example, we can start by Alexander, the Kushans, the Ghaznavids too, then the capital was in Ghazni and then we were also not safe from the Mongols, the Ghengis Khan army invaded our country and destroyed most of the cities and after that we experienced that Timurid period, and Herat was the center of that flourishing civilization at that time. And this was followed by the rivalry between the Mughals and Safavids, who are controlling the eastern and western parts of the country. So after that, from the power vacuum, there was another empire called the Durrani Empire, and the emperor was Ahmad Shah Durrani, who established the modern day Afghanistan. So what, and it wasn't the modern day Afghanistan actually, it was when the Afghanistan name was given to the country and empire was promised, it was the biggest in the history for the Afghans.

The current borders of the country were somehow finalized during King Abdur Rahman Khan and then you know the history, the British came and then the Soviets and now we are also facing a major change. So, the point that I want to make in here is that we have experienced a diverse empire. So the diverse empires have left diverse ethnicities in the country. So, what we come up in here is that these are the ethnic groups in Afghanistan. I haven't mentioned the name, it’s a very sensitive case still going on in Afghanistan and it is considered one of the reasons of instability in the country, but for architects, I think it is the main, it is one of the positive points to be noted in the country because diverse ethnicities means diverse type of living and then diverse buildings. So one of the major influences of the buildings and houses in Afghanistan and in this region is the ethnicities. On top of that, we have the geography and the climate.

So the geography changes actually the altitude changes from 7000 meters to 200 meters above sea level in one region and this has resulted in a very diverse type of climate. So, overall, the climate is arid and dry, but we have different divisions, for example in the North East part of the country, we have severely cold climate

and only nomadic people live there and the others cannot survive and in the south west part of the country we have desert climate but the deserts are inhabitable. So, what happened is that the cities developed along the rivers in strategic locations and also in planed fields, for instance, you can see Kabul City, Kandhar City, and Herat City and Balkh. If you see the geography, they are all located in plain fields.

One of the effects of this type of geography was that the mountain, the mountainous areas are not cultivatable, so they can be only used by the nomads for the or shepherds. So, one type of people that we have enough in Afghanistan is the nomads. So the nomads have their own type of housing that is flexible and movable. This is the first category of houses that we can find, which can be stated as long sedentary dwellings. So, usually in the southern and southern eastern parts, they take the shape of tents, more variations have been developed in each part but usually it's a tent that provides shade and also privacy for the household. But on the northern part of the country, and especially in the Uzbekistan and Central Asia, they still have the yurts or the conical shaped tents that has more insulation and the localities, they want to the heat produced inside to go out or to lose the heat. So in terms of environmental sustainability and in terms of the passive heating and cooling, the black tents, they do not provide a lot of insulation for the households, but what they do is that the shift from one place to another place for finding thermal comfort. So, in these types of buildings, the buildings itself shift to another place, and they have to be shifted around. Especially, you can see that in the caravans the camels or the horses move the house from one place to another place. So it should be flexible and easy to open and close and also they shift from one place to another, to find thermal comfort.

The other type of the buildings which we believe that are the most the most true vernacular architecture of the country are the houses that were built in the rural areas, who were cut off partly from the main trade routes or the main city or the centers of economy. And these houses, for example, exist in Nuristan, they have their own typology of houses, which is similar somehow to the houses in Gilgit in Pakistan or the houses in other parts of the country that did not have the access to the main sources of economy or the craftsmen. So what they had to do was to develop their own solutions using the local material, using the context, and using whatever they had, and they came up came up with this ingenious solutions. For example, in the houses in Nuristan they used the earth insulation, so that the house is protected from the mountain, from the heat, through mountain from the back, and also the house receives solar energy from the front from the southern side and also they have a thick layer of thermal mass that helps with the insulation and we use the local material, nothing is imported and they use it in a very ingenious way because it was developed over centuries. So if we have these developed houses over centuries in local areas, I think it is worth studying and learning from what our grandfathers and sisters did to cope with their climate.

So the third type of houses are the towns, in the cities. So the cities were centers of trade. So the trade routes passed the cities and they were the capital of empires, Herat, Balkh, Kabul and Kandahar. And, they were the center of economy and also the center of culture. So, they developed different types of houses which were sometimes also influenced by the empire itself, so if the empires were vast enough, the builders would come to the main capital and build using their own knowledge and know-how. So, for instance the courtyard houses of Herat, they used the wind during the summer. They have a seasonal wind, they used the wind structure as you can seen in the picture. They take the wind from the rooftops, evaporate it using the water and the wind becomes wet and cool and enters the house or the courtyard, which is a great way of cooling the house or the courtyard.

And similarly, the houses in Kandahar used basements in the courtyard as passive strategies and the houses in Balkh had the dome-shaped structures that helped the thermal stratification of air inside the rooms. And similarly, in the courtyard houses of Kabul, we were interested to study these houses because first of all, they were on the verge of extinction and they were being destroyed. And secondly, we wanted to study them because they are the unique type of houses in the region.

Some similar examples can be found in our areas near Kabul, which were parts of the same empire sometime, but no studies has been carried on these houses, especially on the passive heating and cooling systems. So, the houses are located in Kabul, the red dot shows the location of the city, the graph shows the air temperature and relative humidity comparison of Kabul and Hiroshima, just to show you how that how the air is dry and the winter is cold and dry. And, on the other hand, Hiroshima is more humid and hot, to give you a sense of the climate.

So, there are ancient buildings in Kabul evolved from time to time. The courtyard houses were used during the Mughals and also the Durrani Empire, and then independence came and then we had colonial style houses, we had the villa inside the perimeter, and then after that, during the modernization, we had the European style of houses, which was more in a grid city, in a grid shape or grid layout in the city. And after that we experienced war, less construction was done during that time, and then the reconstruction period

brought a very drastic change in the housing sector of Afghanistan, especially in Kabul. A lot of money was poured into the country but the regulating bodies and also the architects were not able to control that. So local builders build these houses that as you can see from the housing typology occupied almost 90% of the land, no controls on shaping and the insulation and excessive decoration.

So what we are going to do is to reintroduce the courtyard house typology and within the contemporary urban fabric and introduce it to these architects to use it in their designs. So these are the previous literature, as I said, courtyard houses have been studied before, they have been also studied in Kabul, but this is the first in-depth research on their thermal environment. So we carried the field of study in a neighborhood of Kabul called Murad Khani, we chose five houses, we had a lot of limitations, we couldn't exceed the number of houses for this research, the houses now function technical Institute for an NGO. So, these are outdoor views and also the courtyard views and end overview of the houses. You can see the wooden structure and also the high thermal mass used in these houses and a very narrow, shaded alleys, just like any other Islamic city.

So our case study houses had different types of courtyard, that was the reason we chose because we want to introduce different merits and demerits of different type of courtyards to the Afghan architects. We studied the outdoor conditions, using the weather station and also we studied the internal environment of the courtyards, the air temperature, relative humidity, the vertical distribution of air temperature and thermal comfort, surface temperature and also indoor surface temperature and indoor thermal conditions. So, we also checked the sky view factor of the courtyard as an influencing factor but I don't want to go very technical, so, we will keep it very general this time. You can see the ground floor of the house is where it takes thermal insulation and the first floor has relatively less thermal insulation, thermal envelope and the house has 10 rooms.

These are the case study houses with different courtyards, so I want to jump directly into indoor thermal environment, the results. So during the summer, what happened was that thethe courtyard was cold. You can see the wind speed in the courtyard versus the wind speed on the outer so that means the courtyard sheltered the people, but the important thing was that the indoor temperature, the peak indoor temperature inside the houses, it shifted based on the rotation of the sun. So for instance, the western rooms received sun earlier, so the peak was earlier than the southern rooms and then the eastern rooms and the northern rooms didn't. So, the northern rooms and then the southern rooms didn't receive direct thermal insulation. What was interesting was the environment of the business, which I will show in the next slide and also we had a double layer of houses.

So the houses with double layer are shown in here. I hope you can see my drawings. They have relatively stable thermal environment. So what happened was that they had thick thermal insulation, thick thermal mass envelope and it was insulated by another house on the back. So this was regulated, thermally regulated room, which was interesting to see. And the other rooms differed based on the solar radiation or the solar rotation during the day.

So, the environment of the basement was interesting, the coolest area in the house, even during the peak day air temperature was the basement that was completely closed. So the basement, which was completely closed didn't let the air inside. So, it was as cool as the lowest air temperature during the 24 hours. Even if we opened the windows, the basements were not affected a lot, they were still four or five degrees cooler than the outdoor peak temperature. This shows that people use these basements, people could have used his basement during the peak summertime, especially during 12 to two o'clock during the day. Another thing was the use of night ventilation and also the closed conditions. So, as you can see in the second graph, we opened the windows during the night, just to see the effect of the night ventilation. So the night that we opened the window, we were able to lower the peak air temperature of the house on the following day by two degree celsius. So this was an achievement. This is regardless of the courtyard shape. It was just an experiment to see what things work in the Kabul climate and what don’t. So, we can use this technique in the modern houses.

So during the winters, similar thing happened, the houses that received the sun earlier had warmer conditions than the other rooms around the courtyard, but important thing was that people in these houses migrated to summer and winter rooms. So, the thermal comfort — in the northern wing of the house, then the thermal comfort was achievable and they have relatively good or comfortable environment which didn't receive solar radiation. It was also worth it to note that as you can see in this graph the houses, this is when the heater was on. So what happened is that the behavior of people was an interesting thing for us because if you can see, during the peak hours the thermal comfort index shows uncomfortable situation, which was unbearable actually, but people felt comfortable. So, this might show the thermal adaptation or the thermal effects of Afghans because we tend to be warmer or we have to feel a lot warmer than our comfort zone in

order to be satisfied with our internal environment. And this has to change because otherwise it is it is going to have excessive energy consumption, and it will be very difficult for the government to control once the economy boosts, once we have more middle-class economies.

So, we took the outer thermal comfort in the two courtyards. One was a big courtyard and the second was a relatively small courtyard. So, this one and this one, here and here. So, what we noticed was both courtyards were protected from the hot and cold during the winter and summer, which is really important to have an outdoor, semi-outdoor space where people can actually live during some parts of the day of the month. And the biggest courtyard, which received more solar radiation during the winter, the courtyard was more comfortable, especially the northern part which received solar radiation and was protected from the cold winds. On the other hand, the medium courtyard, which was a little bit higher, and didn't receive a lot of solar radiation, was not as comfortable as the bigger courtyard.

On the other hand, during the summer the peak time of the day when the solar radiation is at its highest or at its peak value, both courtyard were not habitable or comfortable for the occupants. And this is actually true because people never use them during the noon, people went to the basement or the southern rooms during the noon. But people used the courtyards during the night to sleep. So we used, we actually validated this concept and we checked that in the summer that the lower part of the graph shows during the night conditions. You can see the night conditions, they were comfortable. So, what happens is that if this, on this type of houses if we can also introduce a migration techniques or at least the choices for the people to shift based on their necessity, we can reduce the energy consumption.

So, in these houses, what happened was that people migrated vertically and horizontally, vertically people migrated from the roof, where they slept during the night to the courtyard and then to the basement or the northern rooms in summer, some way to avoid the heat and stay in the shade and the courtyard was also protected from the hot and dry air. And similarly, they moved horizontally on the season basis. So they moved from the northern rooms that they used during the winter to the southern rooms that they use for summer to avoid the solar radiation. So these were the techniques that we found, and we validated them using the scientific data collection.

Nevertheless, the basements were found to be the coolest spaces and actually the coolest spaces during the summer and also the second layer of the houses that were attached to the neighbor from one side and also protected from the courtyard or outdoor air from the other side with another room, they were found to be shaded so that’s why they have regulated building thermal environment, which can be used in the in the modern houses. So, this was my presentation. I hope I conveyed what I wanted in this short period of time and we are able to use these techniques in the contemporary buildings.

We will require an alteration in the urban fabric because the current urban fabric does not allow for courtyard houses of the bigger sizes and bigger proportions. But we can use another type of courtyard house that can be also adaptable with the typology that we have in Kabul City. Thank you very much.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes: Thank you very much Hosham for your talk, and there are already a few questions that we will be bringing to you at the end. So, with no further delay, I would like to introduce our last speaker Abdul Wasay Najimi. A former teacher of architecture at Kabul University, Abdul Wasay Najimi is a conservation architect, PhD and educated in Denmark and currently working with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Kabul. He has been involved in field studies, trainings, and projects in architectural conservation with the Agha Khan Trust for Culture and published articles on Afghanistan architecture and built heritage, and he's also the author of a book that was mentioned earlier ‘Herat: The Islamic City. A Study in Urban Conservation’ and the co-author of the book ‘The Ghurid Portal of the Friday Mosque of Herat.’ So, please Najimi, thank you very much for accepting the invitation to join and you may start your presentation.

SECTION II

Abdul Wasay Najimi: Thank you very much for the invitation and I’ll to share my screen. Is the screen shared?

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes: No, not yet.

Abdul Wasay Najimi: Okay, I have my IT specialist beside me. So he’ll solve this problem.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes: No worries.

Abdul Wasay Najimi: But until the screen is shared, I’ll just say that thank you very much for the invitation and I'm so happy to see you all. And also to see Sofia and Ayaz, whom I first met in 2009 in Kabul University when I went on behalf of AKTC and helped the department to teach some courses. Sofia was about in 5th class and I helped her in her urban design course and Ayaz was in about in second year of architecture. And I'm pleased to see that they have now a good professional career and teaching others. What we always tell the young architects to achieve. Is the screen okay now?

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes: Yes, it's working. Thank you very much.

Abdul Wasay Najimi: So, the topic of my presentation is built heritage and its conservation, and along that what we have been doing through AKTC project in Afghanistan that would be followed by the teaching and training of young architects in conservation and preservation of political sites. As you can see in the map of Afghanistan, the red spots are the cities where we have worked so far. Kabul was the very first city where we started with the generous funds His Highness the Aga Khan provided in 2002 for reconstruction of Afghanistan, of other projects AKTC started work in cultural heritage. And I must say that I’m personally very much indebted to His Highness’ generous support because before that some of us tried to work in conservation, but it was very difficult to raise funds, 2002 was actually the first time that we could raise funds or used AKTC’s funds for these conservation projects.

In Kabul, we started in 2002 and continued to do that till 2006, but then also from 2013 to 2020, in Herat from 2006 to 2011 and then in the north, in Balkh in 2012 to 2020, and then in Badakshan from 2012 to 2020, which means we are still there, but the conservation projects are not going on, we have other projects in training and working with the young students and women in training. Our very first project was Bagh-e-Babur as you can see the picture at the top, it is a Mughal garden, established in the early 15th Century, but then became more famous by Babur, who was the founder of the Mughal dynasty, because he himself wrote in his Baburnama, accounts that he instructed people on how to make the garden, what sort of trees to plant etcetera and he is buried here, that’s why it is called Bagh-e-Babur. And another famous building in this garden is the Shah Jahangir marble mosque, his grandson who came to Kabul and then in honor of his grandfather did some work in the garden and made this mosque. Down below, you can see the caravanserai, which was established at that time, but not in the direction you see today, but on the foundations of the archeological studies, we redesigned the historic caravanserai architecture in five weeks and it looks very much today as a very historical building, a garden used by the families and individuals as you can see the pictures and in 2019 they had more than 800 to 3000 visitors to the garden.

And then was the work in the Old City, some of the picture you saw in Ayaz ’s presentation, the houses that are built in wooden carpentry designs, there are some mosques and there are some gardens. We tried to identify a cluster which was falling apart around the shrine, and then most of these wooden houses existed in that area we surveyed, students of Kabul University who later on got engaged in works with us and we tried to trained carpenters, mason and people who worked in the cluster etc etc. In the very beginning, it was very difficult actually to raise that kind of manpower but along the projects we managed to train people and they're still working with us.

Another very challenging project was the restoration of the dome of Timurshah, who brought the capital from Kandahar to Kabul, and therefore he is famous as an architect of Kabul. The dome was damaged by a shell during the British-Afghan war in 1836 and it remained tarnished for a while, not as big as you can see here, because this is what we took away to repair, but anyway, it was not in a good shape, and water was leaking. So, we had to open it and it was an engineering challenge actually, but we learned a lot through the work. And as you can see, at that time, we didn't even have scaffolding, so we use bamboo and different types of wood to work very traditionally. Now it's a public garden in the center of the city and is used by people, and we really take students there to learn about the architecture and sophisticated dome construction, etc. And also we did some gardens, in the beginning, we did some gardens in the urban area, researching the very first modern city park established in 1959 and 1960s. Unfortunately, after we rehabilitated the garden, it was closed. It was kept closed by the government and the public is not allowed to use it because the municipality has an office to one side, and the palace it exists on another side so they considered the security, so people are not visiting it.

After these heavy three projects in Kabul, we moved to Herat and there we worked on courtyard houses in one of the districts, you saw some similar pictures in Ayaz’s presentation earlier. A lot of complicated carpentry, brick work and as you can see the houses are courtyard, they have ponds and pools inside the courtyard for cooling, as you mentioned in the summer and then was the covered cisterns in the two lower pictures below, you can see the huge systems water for use of the public and the citadel was also a huge project that was done from 2007 to 2011. Another very interesting project in Balkh was the restoration of Noh Gumbad Mosque, the mosque’s from the nine century, has very good intricate design work, much similar to

some other constructions in Iraq and a university from Florence was also involved in some studies and together with the experts from AKTC, the project has been restored and the surrounding area has been turned into a nice public landscape for the use of local people.

In the same area was the team rebuilding from the 15th century and the mosque part of this building was destroyed for whatever reason, and the dome was damaged. So, the dome was repaired, the tiles were all rehabilitated and the mosque part in the traditional structure for the use of the community and the people. The restoration project we had in Badakshan, the only project I have photos from was the shrine of Nasir Khusrow, a famous scholar who lived in an Afghan village. It has very intricate carpentry work and its ceiling is all in carpentry and have verses of Quran written on it by hand. So it was stabilized and the carpentry was all cleaned and oiled and the roof was protected. Unfortunately, after the project moved, a group of Taliban moved to the area and reportedly damaged a small part of the carpentry. Then we received funds for restoring, and requests from the government to restore one of the historic brick buildings Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And at the top two pictures, you can see the two different innovations, the palace, they call it Store Palace. Originally, it was a palace for one of princes in late 19th century, but it turned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then now as shown below you see the picture of the so-called restored building, and the new port canopy for drive in area.

Similarly, the garden of Chehl-Sutoon, which is another building actually from the early times. Sorry, the garden was not from the early times, there was a pavilion in it. But in the early 19th century, it was turned into a palace, and the 20th century, it was turned into the state’s guest house where the Presidents and Prime Minister of different countries visiting Afghanistan were actually staying here. It was badly damaged during the war, it needed to be restored. So with the funds from German government, we had a chance to restore the whole garden into very nice public garden and the palace itself. And now it's used by the public and in 2019 it had 700,000 visitors.

The project that we work now in Kabul is called the Kabul River Front transformation. Actually it was around old industrial establishments from late 19th century, but then developed early 19th century. It was used as a military factory, prepare arsenal until recently, the government decided, actually, to move all these activities out of town, and let AKTC again to use German financial support into public spaces, partly for commercial market for cultural spaces and some green spaces in the city because Kabul City has been forced so much by commercial activity that all the green area is now vanishing. So, we need more spaces to add into all these different functions. Between all these projects heavy or light, in 2009 we realized actually that unless we train young students in conservation and planning, whatever we do might risk a very questionable maintenance status and in future. So that was the reason that actually, on behalf of AKTC, I used most of my time in the university, and helped the young faculty to teach different courses. And along that we received some funds from the US Embassy in Kabul through which we could bring professors from abroad to help run short courses in summer or winter. And here you can see Professor Kazemi, he was the very first graduate of architecture department in 1974, and he was a professor in Washington State University for a month. Generously he came to Kabul every year for for a month session, and these are all the students and some of the people sitting in this table are actually now in very good positions in the government or in the university or private sector. Similarly, through the studio work, this is actually at the top is the studio class I met Sofia in 2009 and along the work that we do in the university and teaching, we tried to, or at least I tried to bring out students to the field, and I take them normally to different projects, to different neighborhoods, different areas to see things for themselves and see the building material, touch the material, etc. I take the sketching classes to Timursha, to Bagh-e-Babur or to different places to draw or sketch and sometimes document excavations and even there’s a shrine that goes to Kabul University, we call it Sakhi Shrine, which is done in Islamic architecture or blue tiles so that should also see that because it ’s mostly done in Herat and Kabul students have not been to Herat.

The project that I still use as a training ground is called the Gudri Mosque in the old city of Kabul. It was started in 2014 and slowly we did a lot of excavations and we found the foundation by Shah Jahan. It was built in the Kabul city and on top of that King Shah Durrani built another mosque and that was destroyed King Habibullah in 1910s, built something more on it and put the tin roof and it was destroyed in 1992 then 1996 in the Kabul war. So, as you can see we excavated and sorted out a lot of old bricks that we are using and the material and then this part is done and now we are doing some other parts of it.

Because of excavation, we found like subterranean foundation, which is now used as the subterranean, you call it architectural remains or archaeological remains. And usually I take students here, they come from different universities, but mostly Kabul University, Kabul Technical University, to learn about conservation and installation and also people from archaeological department.

Here’s a different picture just to show you that during excavation, they were trying to document, they were trying to watch the artifacts, and they will try to draw them, and so they have to learn all various different field activities and some of the examples of what they found, and how they drew etc. And also, these are the places where some buildings, mausoleum, sorry brickwork mausoleums and some greenery storage is that are still under work. And students of Kabul Technical and Kabul University, some of the students were from Professor Ayaz’s construction course students, he took them out to see the building material and the spaces for these type of contractions for themselves.

And also when AKTC was exhibiting different or sponsoring different exhibitions on architectural photographs, with history or by photographers, we normally bring students to see that for themselves as well as explain to them. Because as Ayaz mentioned, actually, after initial research work that was done in 1970s, — so the university's level of education got damaged and teachers were not available, and we tried to restore all that as much as we restored the buildings. We tried to help the department to restore its capacity in terms of quality education.

And all through this, we learned some lessons. The lessons that I have listed out here is conservation needs funds and skilled professionals, building archeologists, architects, planners, but there's a need for very good coordination between the government and the departmental sectors, as well as the universities. And funds need to be allocated for post-conservation, maintenance because usually, that is where we fail. We do some work, but then, after some time we need money for its upkeep or safeguarding. And then as today, it’s thanks to to you that you are undertaking some seminars. Seminars and publications are helpful tools to enhance the dialogue and knowledge, both for professionals and the students. And with this, I'm done. Thank you very much.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes: Thank you very much Najimi for this great presentation on your work and on your experience with vernacular architecture. So, and also we would like to think of course Sofia in and Ayaz for speaking earlier. And now we can actually move to the questions. So I have received quite a bit of questions, so please don't get offended if your question is not making it through, because we're trying to distribute and be fair. So I will first and I will do the question by order of presentation. So I would first start with Sofia, there were a lot of questions regarding the Gozar research that you showed, one of the question was, if you could perhaps contextualize a little bit your presentation in a larger term of your research? That was one of the questions. Maybe I give you, Sofia if that's okay, I ’ll give you maybe two questions, and then we’ll kind of do a full cycle back but so that was the first question, and then If you were to see in the way that the Gaza governance and necessity for it to be somehow formalized one way or the other, and perhaps integrated into more governmental structure. And yeah, maybe I'll give you the third question because I think those are related, whether Gozars are actually working with NGOs and if they manage to acquire funding from the government and for what in that sense. So Sofia, If you could maybe let us know a little bit more about your, your research, it would be great.

Sofia Sahab: Thank you very much, all are very nice questions. First, I would like to also thank Dr. Najimi. In 2009 when he was teaching, as It was he who guided me, it was his guidance that I choose urban planning as my carrier and did further studies. So here, I'd like to thank him.

And regarding the questions about my research during my Master's and PhD, especially during my PhD research. I wanted to propose a neighborhood unit model to guide urban development in the inner city of Kabul. On that time, had proposed the master plan, but in that it was mentioned that the plan must be complemented by the neighborhood plans or detailed plans. So, my model was kind of a guidance for a guide for those detailed plans or the neighborhood plans. So I have this model was based on that was to enhance their social relations by special arrangements and for that I tried to first establish the existing neighborhoods or communities organizations in Kabul City. And for that I studied Gozars, and as I mentioned that we did not have any or as to the best of my knowledge, we did not any literature that was written about the functions of the Gozars.

So, for that I surveyed the Gozar functions and I found that there were still some functions working and by what I proposed as a neighborhood model for the urban guidance of Kabul City, like I wanted to enhance the social functions of the Gozars by some special arrangements and Gozar special arrangements should be enhanced by social functions. So, that was my overall research because of that I studied the Gozars, until now I am studying because there's for some other reasons like now for enhancing participation of something but on that and it was my first research.

And regarding the second question, yes, because there were still some functions working in the Gozars, and as I did my third survey was on the social functions of the Gozars, because of that — okay sorry — So, a formalization is, I think, very necessary because we have neighborhood functions still working. And as I said,

we have over 70% of Kabul’s urban fabric as informal settlements and these Gozars act as a kind of formal bridge for the urban governance of Kabul City.

So, It’s a kind of, I think if we enhance these functions through some special arrangements that will be nice. And if we formalized them, and if we want to formalize the informal settlements then we should use the carrying functions of the Gozars. And regarding the third question, when I went for the survey in 2013, the UN Habitat was working with the Gozars, they were like as we have some large Gozars and small Gozars, they were like, dividing these Gozars into CDCs I know I don't remember the CDC is like community development something, like it was smaller neighborhoods and then they were giving us some funding and partial of the funds from the President themselves and partially, it was funded by those, by the UN Habitat and they were working on their physical aspects like how to repair or how to have some problems solved through those funds. But, now I'm not sure whether they are funded by Kabul municipality or any other organizations. But yes, we had such kind of funds, our findings through UN Habitat and others.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes: Thank you very much. Sofia for your answer and explaining more of your work and your research. I think this is very helpful and very interesting for us also to have this as an example of governance, which is something that we are looking at as well. So, I will go to Hosham and ask him, there are a few questions, some of them are actually very close to each other and of course triggered by your comments when you were discussing the way that these vernacular architecture is possibly something that we should look at in fact for modern solutions. So, I think there are a few questions and I will basically merge them because I think they very much ask the same and have the same concern which is the fact that there are places where vernacular buildings and architecture continues to evolve and there are other places where vernacular architecture is quite static and actually doesn't change much.

So, the question is how there's Afghani vernacular architecture response to modernization. So, first to modern influence, so in a way, if it's able to accommodate change and then how does it also responds to forces of modernization, probably more in a negative sense. So I think they are maybe two sides of the same question, how is Afghan vernacular architecture able to adjust and on the other hand, what could we learn, what could you see as something that would be potentially transferable in contemporary architecture, which is something we will be also discussing next session.

Ayaz Hosham: Thank you professor. Just like I said, the vernacular architecture is something that is developed based on the needs of the people, so it cannot be, even now in Kabul. If you see the figure ground of the city, the informal settlement that Professor Sofia pointed out in the informal settlement, people are unwillingly, unknowingly, I don't know how to say it, they are still building the courtyard houses. So, I guess this is a way of building inherited in these people because that may be best represents their needs and that solves their needs without knowing their benefits. I mean, in this case the passive and low energy building techniques. So in Kabul, we have, I must have shown you few of them, but you can find it online. So, in the formal areas, people are building following the great urban fabric, but when you go to the informal areas, far from the old city of Kabul where the courtyard houses are, the informal expansion or the informal settlements follows the courtyard houses.

So first, I wanted to say this because this is probably something the indigenous way of living or something. On the other hand, unfortunately, doctors are mentioning that in the old city of Kabul people are destroying the courtyard houses, the beautiful courthouses and they're rebuilding the modern, contemporary houses. I mean, without any consideration to the original character of the region. So, Afghanistan, unfortunately, has not responded well to adapt to the vernacular architecture, we were not able to, we as architects and also as educators and the government also, were not able to tell the owners of the traditional buildings the benefits of those buildings. So that's why I did this research. If you show them some figures and tell them that your house will perform better than a contemporary building in Kabul, and you will use less heating and cooling energy. They will, they might accept this and they might use, they might not destroy their houses. So I would be happy if Dr Najimi will correct me and add to this, but It is our job to tell those inhabitants of these houses and also it's our job to inform the architects, because it's them who are building the houses and also the government is very cooperative in this case. In the past decade, the government has put a lot of attention to the traditional architecture. I heard that they are even planning to introduce traditional settlement patterns, which has the modern or contemporary facilities of the 21st century for some of the suburban areas in Kabul. The meeting we had with His Excellency, the President last week, he mentioned this, that they're planning to carry out a study or to design these type of houses, together with Sasaki in the suburban areas. So, I think it's a work in progress and we are hopeful actually, we're hopeful that people will know the value of the traditional houses at least. Thank you.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes: Thank you. Well, I think this is extremely interesting. The point is a perhaps that I think is quite clear in a way there is kind of this economic layer. If you're able to convince people that

they might get some economical benefits by retaining, you know, more vernacular ways of of construction, they could benefit from it somehow. I think that's a very important element. So thank you very much, and actually, the question for Najimi is very close to that and it's related to the perception of the public towards heritage and if you've seen, let's say, a shift in the ways that this architecture has been perceived via your work. So of course, I think in the architecture, you know, discipline and via your work as an educator, but also more generally, if you could say that, you know, the kind of, just the people who are using this type of architecture or may be exposed to this architecture are seeing more and more value into it beyond the kind of economical aspect that Ayaz was mentioning. So, could you maybe develop a little bit for us on that and I think it quite it reverberates with what Hosham was mentioning earlier.

Abdul Wasay Najimi: Well, my personal observation is that because the education system also got damaged since 1978 onwards, and a lot of foreign interference, whether it was Eastern Europe or Western influences of, you know, as you call it the culture or material or whatever here. Afghans also started taking things by adoption, by copying rather than analyzing what is good, what is bad. For example, if you go to the heritage of the carpets that you have in the house, the most good, woolen carpet would be traded out for some synthetic, machine-made corporate produced in Iran or Turkey or somewhere, all wall to wall carpet because they have seen it somewhere else, and they think this is better. It's easier to wash while, for example, women sometimes are dealing with it, you know, cleaning the house would say that the traditional carpets are more heavy and it's difficult etc. The same with furniture or other things. So like specifically today, you see, most of the globe where it is all imported from Thailand, China, and other places, instead of being produced here, they are looking. I’m sometimes surprised that in Facebook, I see comments by some people who believe that the typical Afghan shalwar kameez is actually not an Afghan dress code, it comes from Pakistan.

So that means that the similar like earlier when you talk about vernacular, very often people even the students of architecture, I mean without thinking themselves, do not understand the vernacular as our vernacular, that is something that is more functional, more apt to the point maybe produced by architects or more professional architects, produced by people who used that for a function and that function works. So, I think as many other things, you know, like, even in the politics, you know, the opinion changes, sometimes from the left to the right, from right to left in architecture or native architecture it ’s the same. People in 2002, when this new government was established, suddenly people thought that houses are needed in Kabul, so what should we do either, they were grabbing government land to produce more districts, or they were grabbing government lands for corruption, to build apartment houses. And people rushed to buy these apartment houses very extensively and now they’re selling them in actually halved price because they can see that they are not too warm in winter, they are hot in summer and somethings the house itself is not working because there's no electricity. And for children, it’s tough to be on the seven or six floor and have no access to a playground.

While as Ayaz said that traditionally people built houses that were one storied or two storied with some courtyard houses spaces so that they can immediately walk out of a closed space to an open space because at once we have nine to ten months seasonal weather where you enjoy the outdoor rather than indoor. It might only be the winter, two months that you would like to be indoor Because of the severe cold outside. But even then, because we always have sun and we enjoy sun so people try to be outside, even in cold temperature because you can sit towards the sunny side of a wall and we want to. So that kind of things, but think the mistake is of the of the planners, or the policymakers and the architects who cannot understand these things, we just copied from books or magazines or nowadays, even from internet. And you will be surprised that they are downloading the ready made catch files of apartments built in Canada or Europe or something and they have no question of orientation in Kabul. We have flats that receive no sun at all during 12 months of the year and then we have rooms that are always exposed to sun on the southern side, and you wish to have a room that was to the north side and it’s cold. So all these mistakes that were identified through the studies in the 1970s are not studied today by these people. So this is why also Ayaz is stressing this side of the vernacular architecture, and I'm also trying to emphasize through what we’e conserving and preserving and understanding and all these other things throughout.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes : Thank you for this for this very complete answer. I mean, I think, I would say this almost kind of universal question, there are a lot of places where you know, how do you manage to explain or to, kind of, let's say raise awareness on the value of heritage. I think that this is kind of a constant battle and even in places that are you know more, let's say, used to deal with heritage and thinking about Egypt, which has seen recently a kind of a backlash on the way that it's been dealing with heritage, for instance. After being kind of the best student in terms of heritage for a long time you've seen, maybe if you’ve followed the bit, the destruction of necropolis parts of the city and also kind of a general neglect in terms of, the kinds of care that this type of ancient structures would require and that is very much linked to

also governmental decisions. I mean, in this case, you can see that the planning, so transportation planners just cut through you know, ancient fabric and there's very little care for these things.

But you mentioned that somehow also there is a governmental interest. So, maybe you want one last question and this could be discussed by the three of you, I guess, but would you see in the future a kind of more focused view from authorities to work towards this kind of on the one hand, recognizing the value of the vernacular, and on the other hand, the kind of heritage aspect. And in a way, I think that this could be also paired to what Sofia has been looking at and how governments could use existing governance system informally, if they wish, if you wish to even even make that percolate at the level of people who are not even in the studies, but just to make them aware of that. So this is a question a little bit for the three of you and I'm aware that we are a little bit over time, but maybe we can we can use that to conclude. So, Abdul, maybe you would like to give us thoughts about that, just some general thoughts, if you think what would you envision for the future of heritage in Afghanistan.

Abdul Wasay Najimi: Unless we have programs or sessions in education and awareness for people of different functions like the architects in the university, and the policymakers in the government's and the local people in the local area of districts or whatever. People tend to somehow, I don't know why, but it could be a psychological thing and everybody wants to be modernized and this word ‘modernize’ could be understood differently by different people in different places and different times. But if the modernization is just copying things. For example, whatever we see through TV channels or dramas, and then, or they travel to some places, and then they say, well this is what I want specifically when they have some free money early, easily earned for example. It has been the case for many people in Afghanistan because of the wars, some people became very rich because of, many people lost their lives and families and loved ones, but other people became very rich, they made a lot of money through all of these military operations of these trades, etc. So they don't know how to spend their money or now they want to make a name, and that you know they want to have something modern, something nobody has something very big, very, you know, high class. And like somebody said that recently, somebody was telling me that a certain person has imported all his fixtures for his bathroom from Dubai example, I mean you can buy them in Kabul made in Pakistan, made in Iran or made in somewhere. You don't need to import it from Paris, or Japan or somewhere, but some people do that. So, I think this is why I stress mostly, which is also actually on the line of what His Highness on the other hand has always been saying that education is a must. And that is what I'm usually dwelling on that we have to do more training, more education, more awareness raising, and through work we should show to people because they have to see it by their eyes before they adopt it.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes: Thank you, Abdul. Ayaz, would you like to maybe compliment a little bit or also tell us your take on this and perhaps more specifically on the vernacular architecture question and how you can see the kind of future on look into this question.

Ayaz Hosham: Thank you professor, thank you sir. So, I think that more than before now the government is aware of the value of the tradition and the traditional architecture and culture. But, the pace that they are building and in the speed the government is building right now is not being, we're not able to catch them, the speed is very fast. Especially for instance, the government built, they are planning to build hundred mosques around the country. So you can imagine a mosque in Kandahar in a very desert climate and a mosque in Badakshan and another one in the northern side, the mountains. But there is a typical plan for all the mosques around the country and if there is any changes the changes is only in the form and structure or the foundations of the mosques to fix at the site. So what I think, first of all, we should be hopeful for the for the peace and after that we can think about these things. So after that, I think we, I am hopeful that we can push the government to develop regional or at least zonal architecture typologies for different climatic zones of the country. And those guidelines can be used by the architects in those areas to build or to use for building at least regional buildings. I mean by regional buildings, I also focus on the original character of the building, not on the, the fact that it should perform well under the local climate and should use local material. So first of all, the government wants to do that but yeah, I think, as the Kabul University, we have to find a way to propose this to the government this idea.

But meanwhile, it takes a lot of time, it's not a sudden solution to the problems that we face right now we have to do a lot of research, just like I did in Kabul courtyard houses to deepen our knowledge of what's happening. And then slowly, slowly, we have to provide guidelines for the builders architects and also municipalities to follow them and to at least produce buildings that fit to the local site, local climate, and local culture.

We can use the regional lessons in this case, by region lessons I mean those provinces that are close to our western neighbors. They are also close in architecture to those members actually, those provinces that are close to the northern neighbors, It’s Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. They are also following the

same architecture typology as those countries. So what we can do is that we can also look for solutions in our neighboring countries and that can be something like a shortcut to define the regional guidelines for future buildings in Afghanistan. Thank you.

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes: Thank you very much Ayaz, that was a really great answer. And I think original guidelines are definitely something we should we should keep in mind also for our studios. So may I ask Sofia to take the final word, and maybe tell us a little bit how what she sees for the kind of Gozar network as something that could be potentially useful for the future and also how somehow in the informal context, it could be a potential to even actually reflect on what both Najimi and Hosham mentioned in terms of perhaps sensibilizing the people who build to actually keep this in mind.

Sofia, are you still here? Okay, I think, Sofia might be might be, cannot answer right now. So,well, I mean, it would have been interesting to know but I guess we could also look into her literature and find maybe an answer to that.

So, I will basically wrap up, and thank you for your presentation and agreeing to contribute to this session today. Sofia Sahab, Ayaz Hosham, and Abdul Wasay Najimi, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure to watch your presentation and also discuss with you somehow the question of vernacular heritage and governance in Afghanistan and this has been a very enriching conversation. And also thank you very much to the audience for the questions, I hope I was able to convey them as well as possible. So, I think we are fulfilling the hope that we had to get a sense of the challenges and the assets that traditional and vernacular architecture in Afghanistan face and I would like to conclude by thanking again the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asian Institute for allowing us to set up the sessions as they are. And also would like to remind you of our next session on contemporary architecture in urbanism in Afghanistan, which will be taking place on October 24 with another set of guests on the same channels. So with this, I would like to thank you and hope to see some of you at the next session. Thank you very much.