The Vernacular Production of Doha Courtyard Houses: From Qatari Families to Migrant Workers

Abstract

This research explores the ongoing vernacular production of courtyard houses in Doha, Qatar, throughout their modern history—by Qatari families in the past and by low-income, mainly male, migrant inhabitants today. By analysing these houses’ material culture, built environment and through ethnography, the study elaborates on changes and continuities in their domestic spatialisation—by these two different population groups and the neighbourhoods in which they are located in relation to the changing socio-political and economic contexts of Qatar. This study is informed by, and aims to contribute to, a number of intersecting disciplines: architectural studies, urban studies and migration studies.

The research explores the social production of courtyard houses by Qatari families in Qatar’s pre and early-oil periods by investigating the built environment’s oral history, historical aerial photography and documentary history. Within the scope of urban and migration studies, the study explores the social, economic, cultural and physical restructuring of the host country’s concrete spaces by migration—taking four neighbourhoods in central Doha as case studies. It delves into the government’s urban planning and redevelopment strategies with a particular focus on these neighbourhoods and its broader approach towards the housing of low-income male migrant workers in Qatar. Finally, at the intersection of migration and architectural studies, the research seeks to illustrate low-income expatriates’ home-making and domestic life in the host country in relation to their transnational commitments and statuses in the Gulf. In this regard, the study sheds light on the migrant workers’ ideas, preferences and spatial tactics towards state-led strategies regarding their housing in Qatar.

The research concludes that, while the spatial practices of low-income migrant workers in Doha’s courtyard houses are regarded as ‘informal’ in today’s context, in terms of their socio-spatialisation, they bear numerous commonalities to their original production: which is vernacular.