Darat al Funun renovation

Cases of ancient churches with five voids are rare, the only one in Jordan being from an excavation at Um Qais in 1998. Looking at the floor plan of the main house of Darat al Funun, one can see a great similarity to that of a typical Byzantine church. With a similar West-East orientation and a semicircular eastern elevation, it is important to realize how the site, with its Byzantine church, might have influenced the design of the house.

Partially cut into the natural bedrock, the northern elevation of the church must have given the house its orientation, and a drop in the rock on which the house sits made it necessary to raise its eastern half on a basement. In this basement one can see parts of an ancient cistern and a mosaic floor.

The way in which the two oldest houses of the Darat al Funun - the first and the third - were built demonstrates a structural system in transition.

Walls were built with two layers of limestone with mud mortar in between. The outer layer is of hewn blocks of stone placed in clear courses, while the inner layer is of rubble stone of smaller sizes and with informal coursing. These outer walls range from 40 to 60 cm in thickness and could thus be depended upon to support another floor or just the roof above.As continues load-bearing walls.

Unlike the structural system used in houses today, a post and beam frame of cast-in-place reinforced concrete, the structures of the 20s were built as boxes of walls that share the load of the roof.