The Courtyard House: Can a Sustainable Future Learn from a Context Relevant Past

This paper looks at the courtyard house as a traditional urban dwelling of yesteryears with a view to explore its potential in informing the housing developments of the future. In order to address the question, the paper starts with a historical overview of this built form as an urban dwellings that fulfilled its functional and spatial requirements in times gone by. It then goes on to highlight the inadequacy of post-colonial housing solutions in Algeria and to look into two important aspects of this traditional housing typology; its socio-cultural relevance and environmental performance. The analysis is carried out using both secondary research in the form of three examples from the literature and the primary research carried out as field work in the form of temperature measurements inside a house, during the hot season, in Boussaada (Algeria). The discussion and concluding remarks attempt to make arguments for re-considering what could be learned from such traditional housing typology to inform future urban development that would subscribe to the values of sustainable development.