Hosh 1

1This hosh, located in Paul VI Street, is accessed through an arched passageway running along the eastern boundary of the plot.

2It consists of a lower ground floor, serving the storage and animal rooms in the courtyard, and an upper ground floor with three shops opening onto the street and, on the courtyard side, two living rooms preceded by a gallery. The rooms on these two levels are covered with cross vaults.

3The first floor is a composite unit combining a large vaulted room located in the corner of the hosh, framed on the courtyard side and on the street side by two additions that can be seen in the change in the construction method, with thinner walls and a metal beam structure for the floors. The façade on the street reflects this, with the archetypal geminate window of the vaulted room and a composite system of openings for the more recent part. The second floor, partially built, has only one room and two small annexes, allowing for a probable future extension. Three independent staircases give access to the different rooms or apartments of this hosh, occupying almost the entire courtyard.

4The rooms are generally located on two perpendicular sides of the plot, but there is no clear structure to the layout, which changes according to the level. However, the geometry of the plot, which is similar to a square, determines the orthogonality of the different rooms, square or rectangular, large or small, in this hosh.

Figure 25a – Hosh 1, scale 1:250.

Figure 25b – Hosh 1, scale 1:200.

Illustration 12 – Entrance to the courtyard of house 15 (see fig. 42).

Hosh 2

5Located at the corner of a passageway linking Paul VI Street and Manger Street, this hosh has four floors.

6The ground floor, accessible from the dead end, is reserved for animals and storage; the rooms are located below street level and open onto a residual courtyard which provides the access routes of the hosh. On the first floor, the street level, there are three small rooms on the courtyard and three shops opening onto the street. The third and fourth floors are the living quarters. This ensemble is characteristic of a building spread out over time, the rooms of varying shapes and sizes being built one after the other according to construction methods that have evolved. The building has several terraces on the upper levels which reinforce the volumetric complexity of the hosh.

7Numerous staircases cling to the façades or extend into the space to serve the fourteen rooms of the hosh on four levels. This almost Piranesian ensemble is revealed in the public space, as the courtyard with its numerous staircases opens directly onto the passage. It can also be seen as the staging of the impossible space that we find in Maurits Cornélis Escher’s drawings, as the conventional representation of architecture struggles to portray the complexity of the arrangements encountered.

Figure 26a – Hosh 2, Cross-section, street elevation et plans, scale 1:250.

Figure 26b – Axonometry of hosh 2, scale 1:200.

Illustration 13 – Public stairway 6, opening to the south-west and the terraced hills.

Hosh 3

8This hosh is on Paul VI Street, and only part of the ground floor and one room on the first floor could be surveyed. Access is through a vaulted passageway and one is confronted with a set of staircases serving the rooms on the ground floor, which are located at different heights to adapt to the topography of the ground, and the rooms on the first and second floors. The independence of the rooms and the autonomy of the circulation systems characteristic of this house remain a constant in the structure of the ahwâsh. The design of the street façade, with a single room on the second floor, also expresses one of the characteristics of the ahwâsh, that of being a structure open to new extensions.

Figure 27 – Hosh 3, scale 1:250.

Illustration 14 – Dead end of the Syriac hosh. In the axis, the main entrance of the hosh.

Hosh 4

9This house has three levels. The ground floor, facing a dead end leading on to Star Street, has two rooms, one of which opens onto a back yard. From this level, an external staircase leads directly to the second floor, which is the terrace of the Syriac Orthodox Church. The rooms on this floor are accessed by a walkway spanning the gap between the house and the terrace. The middle level is also accessible from the terrace, but by another staircase. Each floor is therefore independent. The middle and upper levels consist of two bays with two main rooms and two alcoves above the dead end. A small terrace replaces one of the alcoves on the second floor. The two rooms on the upper level have two distinct construction methods, a cross vault in one case and a ceiling in the other, revealing two separate phases of construction. The room with the ceiling, the last to be built, has a symmetrical façade consisting of a door surmounted by a transom covered by an arch, and framed by two identical windows.

10The compositional unit of this small hosh is the floor and not the room, even if the construction method of the upper level indicates that it was built over a period of time. However, the system of access remains characteristic of the hosh, with each staircase serving only one level, and one still has to go up to the second floor from the dead end to return to the first.

Figure 28 – Hosh 4, Longitudinal section, plans and facades, scale 1:250.

Hosh 5

11Located on Najâjra Street between two stairways, this hosh comprises two shops on the street and a terrace also accessible from one of the two dead ends by a staircase and a footbridge located outside the plot (floor plan) and five rooms united by a courtyard covered with cross vaults (upper and lower ground floor plans). The courtyard is currently closed off on the dead-end side by a wall in its lower part, which is extended in its upper part by a glass transom rising to the arches of the vaults.

12The house is accessed from one of the dead ends. One enters through the courtyard, which serves a large corner room, and on either side, two groups of two superimposed rooms of low height. For the first group, access is via staircases installed in the thickness of the walls, and for the other, the lower room is served from the courtyard while the upper room is only accessible from the dead end. A two-storey garden extends this compact building, but remains outside the structure of the hosh.

13This is the case for most of the ahwâsh, which are sometimes organised in relation to the landscape, with a panoramic view of the terraced gardens of the valley, but rarely have a compositional relationship with the outside, whether it be a courtyard or a garden.

14The hosh acts as a retaining wall for Najâjra Street by means of the two superimposed rooms located below the level of the street. In Bethlehem, there are two types of ahwâsh rooms: 1) the rooms that are built as close to the ground as possible to avoid major earthworks: this arrangement mainly concerns houses that extend upwards from the street; 2) the rooms that are built over a basement in order to ensure foundations for the house and to act as a retaining wall for the street, for houses that extend downwards from the street.

Figure 29 – Hosh 5, scale 1:250.

Hosh 6

15This hosh, located in the heart of the block between Najâjra Street and Paul VI Street, is served by a dead end leading off Najâjra Street which borders it on two sides. Here, there is no overall plan, no discernible geometry; on the ground floor, there is only an addition of five closed rooms, two of which are preceded by a portico or an open room. They are accessed via a central passage, a residual free space resulting from the layout of the hosh rooms. The hosh has a partial basement, a recurrent arrangement in Bethlehem to adapt to the steepness of the terrain. Several staircases lead to the four-room upper floor and to terraces surrounded by walls about one metre high. This layout incorporates a future upper storey, another characteristic structure of the hosh, which is in a constant state of flux, rarely presenting a finished form.

16In the absence of precise historical data, two opposing hypotheses could explain the spatial organisation of this hosh and its urban insertion: either the urbanisation resulting from Najâjra and Paul VI Streets left a void in the heart of the block which the hosh occupied; or the construction of the hosh is earlier, being built on an open plot of land, in the manner of a village construction made up of proximity, distance, and simple adaptation to the terrain; the dead end would then have been created subsequently to allow access from the street which would have been built up later. The impact of a break in an old fabric produces a similar effect, creating a new fabric that goes along with the road and pushes the old urbanisation into the background.

Figure 30a – Hosh 6, cross-section, ground floor plan, first floor plan, scale 1:250.

Figure 30b – Axonometry of hosh 6, scale 1:200.

Illustration 15 – Interior view of the corner house of Stairway 4 (see fig. 19).

Hosh 7. Al-Badd Museum

17The museum is housed in an old house linked to a mill. It is located at the corner of Najâjra Street opposite the market. The shape of the plot is roughly trapezoidal, the first of the two non-parallel sides being aligned on the contours and the other following the line of a public stairway that goes obliquely down the slope. The construction is not aligned on the curve of the street, but set back from it and formed in the geometry produced by the layout of the staircase. The mill, located on the eastern side of the plot, has two rooms: one of which houses the press, while the other, used for storage, extends beyond the boundaries of the plot and lies under the adjoining house. The particular geometry of the room housing the press is the result of an accommodation between the direction given by the staircase and the line of the greatest slope. It should be noted that it is quite common in these places of geometric conflict to see solutions arrived at by the installation of singular elements, equipment, monuments or squares.

18The house is set back from the alignment, leaving a void, that acts as a basement area courtyard. The floor of the courtyard is approximately two metres below street level. This courtyard acts as an access point for the ground floor, which is stepped according to the slope of the land. The mill and a separate room are located directly at this level. Then, one descends another two metres to arrive in an access courtyard 3 m wide and 10 m long, partially covered by a cross vault. The rooms overlooking the courtyard are as follows: to the south, a large room measuring 5 × 11 m, which is situated 1.5 m below the level of the courtyard; to the east, a small room measuring 2 × 3 m; and to the west, two rooms, one approximately 5 × 6 m, the other measuring 4 × 5 m and being on two levels, the upper level being reserved for living quarters. The first floor, accessed by a staircase from the courtyard, is served by an L-shaped passageway and comprises three rooms and an iwân open to the north, facing a blind wall. The iwân is an exterior space covered by a cross vault, which plays no structuring role in the composition and access routes of this level. The iwân and the two rooms that flank it face south through geminated windows that frame the landscape of the valley. The last level has only one room preceded by a vaulted porch and a storage space.

19Apart from its function as a mill, this complex is very representative of the structure of the ahwâsh. Away from the street, it appears as a dense and cohesive grouping of independent rooms, maintaining no particular relationship with the garden located to the south of the plot. Similarly, the façades, in their lack of planned design, confirm that the house belongs to the Bethlehem ahwâsh, a massive stone construction with no ornamentation, except in the refined design of certain geminated windows.

20However, this description does not answer completely the question of the singular relationship of this house/mill to the street. Although we can describe the geometric and spatial structure of the house in its relationship to the topography and the layout of the stairway, its relationship to Najâjra Street remains problematic and difficult to understand. It questions both the use –access to the mill through a courtyard situated two metres below the street level is not the most obvious solution– and the non-existent relationship of the building to the street, although they are in close proximity. In this place, the street seems to have played no role in the structuring of the urban fabric, which is organised by its relationship to the slope and the stairs. It could be hypothesised that the mill marked a boundary of the growth of the town (a gateway?), by interrupting the continuity of the urban fabric bordering Najâjra Street. In fact, the mill marks the end of a continuous urban stretch of houses and shops in line with the street, a type of urbanisation that can be found to the west, beyond the point at which the stairway comes out on Najâjra Street. In this configuration, the mill could have been served, on level ground, from the west, from the stairway coming from the gardens, the houses aligned with the street between the mill and the corner of the staircase having been built later.

21A similar situation can be found on the other side of Najâjra Street, where the market is completely at odds with the surrounding urban fabric. An interpretation of the plots of land would tend to validate this urban fact, which would need to be confirmed, or denied, by historical studies.

Figure 31a – Hosh 7, scale 1:250.

Figure 31b – Axonometry of hosh 7, scale 1:200.

Figure 32 – Conceptual models: the hosh as an addition of rooms.

Figure 33 – Conceptual models: interior volume of a hosh room.