Reimagining Traditional Architecture for Modern Needs | Riyad Joucka | TED

What if the places we lived in could truly reflect who we are and not just what's fastest or cheapest to build? This isn't about everyone designing their own house. It's about rethinking how homes are created in the first place. We've all seen this. Rows of homes so alike you can only tell them apart by the color of the car parked outside. This is not an AI image. It’s a real photo of a neighborhood in Dubai not far from where I live. And it's designed for efficiency, not identity. Truth is, most homes today are designed by developers for the market and not for the people that will live in them. These template-driven systems leave little room to innovate or think about form or function. But this reliance on standardization isn't new. Historically, modular systems were not designed to maximize profit. After World War II, when entire cities across Europe were flattened, there was a way to get people back under roofs quickly: prefabs, kits-of-parts, temporary housing.

Across the world, modularity became a tool for urgent rebuilding. And it worked fast but often at the cost of character. Sadly, today, once again, architecture and heritage are being erased. In places like Gaza, in Sudan, in Ukraine, what disappears isn't just people and buildings, it's memory, belonging, culture. I'm not here with a simple fix. What I'm saying is we must rebuild, but we need to rebuild with identity in mind. My name is Riyad Joucka. I’m an architect based in Dubai where I run a practice called MEAN: the Middle East Architecture Network. What excites me is finding ways to fuse novel technologies with local stories, and sometimes that means experimenting with 3D printing and robotics. At other times, it's about rereading a tradition and giving it a contemporary form. Across different scales from a single object to a cultural building, our projects look at how local materials and craftsmanship could be given a new life through technology.

We’ve worked in different places across the Middle East, Europe and the US, but the constant is this: every project tries to be forward-looking while remaining grounded in [its] space. And that's what excites me the most about housing. It's where technology and belonging meet most directly. Because our homes aren't just shelters, they should be mirrors of who we are. And to further introduce myself, this is the house that I grew up in, designed by my father. You see, both of my parents are architects, [and] both of my grandparents were notable artists, so I grew up in a household surrounded by conversations about art, culture and space. And that's how I see design today. Not as a template, but as something truly rooted in family, stories and place. The house truly reflects the traditions of the region, as you can see in this scan from Al-Bina magazine, [which in] 1994 wrote about the house. I pulled these from my father's archives. You can see natural light being drawn through skylights, natural stone facade covering the exterior -- very typical of houses in the region.

A majlis cast in concrete in the walls themselves. My father describes it as post-traditional architecture because postmodernism never really fit our context. One of the few things he and I agree on when it comes to work. No, but the house really is a reflection of our traditions, but in a contemporary form. And I keep returning to this traditional wisdom. The majlis for gathering, diwans for hosting, spaces that extend beyond their functionality to bring people together. Courtyards that cool in shade. Spaces that make the outdoors livable. Barjeels or windcatchers that breathe air through a home. Passive design centuries before we use the word "sustainability." Screens that filter light and create privacy: mashrabiyas -- design that shapes atmosphere as much as structure. And we use a similar vocabulary for our house at MEAN. For House 00, the first house we designed, we designed the house around a courtyard with a water body cooling the exterior.

The house is wrapped with this corrugated stone facade, echoing the language of the topography of the mountain surrounding it. The house sits atop Jebel Jais, and to me, it’s a real interpretation of traditional forms but in a contemporary home. Cosmos House, we collaborated with artist Julia Ibbini to design these mashrabiyas. We used algorithms and fractal geometry to filter light into speckled shadows. The house is designed to be 3D-printed using sand from the surrounding environment. The ancient wisdom of desert architecture reinterpreted using digital tools. Beyond practice, I also lead the Adaptive Majlis research project at Zayed University. We’re looking at ... how 3D-printed modular systems could help us reinterpret these traditions today. The Majlis, a unique typology of the region, is being rethought through the lens of modern technology, local craftsmanship and contemporary lifestyles. That same thinking helped shape permutable assemblies, a modular system we developed at MEAN for housing.

We asked ourselves: we need to produce a modular system with a certain goal, and that goal is to design for a modular system that is personal, local and expressive. And we asked ourselves: instead of erasing character, what if modular systems helped showcase it and express it, responding to contexts, climate and culture without any added cost? Djenné Great Mosque in Mali is the world's largest adobe building. But what's remarkable isn't just the architecture, it's the people. Every year, the community gathers to repair its walls and replaster them, turning maintenance into a festival. The building survives because of the community that maintains it. And that sense of shared responsibility is something that we've lost in many modern cities. Here's how our system works. A builder, developer or simply any user enters parameters around their spatial needs, context, climate, into a digital platform. It then generates layouts composed of modules shaped by that context.

These parts are then prefabricated off-site, using local low-carbon materials produced with precision and little waste. The parts are assembled piece by piece, almost like a modern kit-of-parts or a set of LEGOs, if you may, into a home. The process is fast and efficient, but unlike traditional prefab, it does not force sameness. See, traditional modular systems rely on repeated templates. With 3D printing, we can break that mold, designing for efficiency as well as belonging. The system scales up from house to neighborhood, where every home shares a logic, but no two are alike. It's modularity with character, turning repetition into rhythm. 3D printing makes curves, textures and ornaments practical at scale. Screens inspired by local patterns. Walls that read like the desert. Details prefab usually cuts out.

You see, modularity doesn't have to mean sameness. It can mean variation, intention and agency. Design shouldn't come from a catalog. It should grow with you, respond to you and reflect you. And that's what architecture should be. Not imposed, not distant, but deeply rooted. We shouldn't keep repeating the same formulas. We can build differently. We can invite people and communities to shape the spaces we call home, because design, real design, belongs to everyone. Thank you. (Applause)