Husn al Jahim al Qu’ayti

Aden, Yemen

This residential complex is designed to allow an extended family to live together. It consists of three buildings: a single-storey structure containing the men’s meeting place and two larger, linked blocks, five and seven storeys high. Each floor typically provides three bedrooms: other facilities include a women’s meeting place, kitchens and a dining hall. The main structure is of reinforced concrete, ceilings are of timber. Load-bearing walls are of basalt: the bands of lighter stone defining the separate storeys are in keeping with local tradition, as are the finials on the roof, which pierce ‘the clouds during the rainy seasons’