Traditional house elements in the Sahara ' Ksour' Northern Algeria

Abstract EN

The ksour of The Algerian Northern Sahara are distinguished by the diversity of their traditional architecture and their specific local building material and their special construction techniques.

The people who built them made use of what was available to them bearing in mind the specificity of the desert region, especially the traditional residential architecture, which is at the center of human beings stability.

Architects attached the greatest importance to the respect for privacy of the population through different architectural elements, but the geographical and historical diversity of the northern desert of Algeria had affected variably the traditional architecture in all over that region, in terms of general planning and functional coordination within the 'ksar.

Through this study, we will try to know the most important elements in the traditional house units in the ksour of the northern Algerian Sahara, focusing on three different regions: Al-Saoura in the west, the 'Mzab valley in the center and the Rig valley in the east.