This paper focuses on the significance of privacy in housing design for private cultures and analyses residential satisfaction of design. Furthermore, the paper presents the unique features of a traditional house in Islamic cultures, and the role it plays providing residents of these houses with the desired privacy along with the importance and the meaning of residential privacy in private cultures, and how the contemporary architecture respects the privacy achieved in the traditional Islamic housing. Mirbat town in the Sultanate of Oman is used as a case study for this research and builds on the authors' previous study of Mirbat's old and new residential quarters where the detailed study of the architecture of 102 traditional residences were conducted and assessed. Furthermore, two additional surveys of young and older residents (as focus groups) of traditional and contemporary housing in Mirbat were conducted to expand and strengthen the findings of the current research, which aimed to study residential satisfaction as it relates to different aspects of privacy and as a measure of evaluating residential quality. Through a comparison of old and new quarters of Mirbat, and traditional and contemporary residences, the authors expose the differences in design between the old and the new. Finally, the authors conclude that those unique features that were employed in traditional housing design are no longer employed in contemporary residences' design (or employed only as decorative elements) compromising the privacy of the residents.

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Visiting Oman, one firstly encounters wide roads and exaggerated decorations of house façades—situated behind high walls. These broad roads and decorated dwellings are unlike traditional Omani architecture which can be identified as very sensitive to scale and climate. Omani architecture can also be visualized from the narrow streets and low height buildings across many well-preserved villages; built using humble mud or stone structures. Another encounter one might have is the traditional ‘Omani burqa.’ It is worn by some Omani women, originally designed for protection from dust and sand, which mimics the features of a falcon. Lately, the ‘Omani burqa’ has developed into a true fashion-item and is used as a ‘face mask’ with different colors and shapes. Fashionable burqas are often decorated with shimmering crystals or diamonds which differs from the traditional design. What is visible behind the ‘burqa’, the ‘eye’, and the ‘burqa’ itself, become quite embellished, subsiding the importance of the other parts of the face. The façade design of a modern Omani house and its walls are like the modern ‘burqa’ and the ‘eye’. Even though the house is separated from the street by high walls, the importance of visual access from the street to façade can be perceived from the highly decorated house façades, and decorated walls at the same time. This study—using visual analysis of house façades in Salalah, Oman—attempts to identify the architectural elements used in architectural design. These elements are repeated all over Oman, to accentuate visibility from the street to the façade. Eventually, the study concludes that the importance of the visuality from the street to the façade, in a changing ‘closed’ society, is the leading factor for the embellishment of the wall and the façades, rendering the overall design behind the wall insignificant.

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This experimental report describes the invention of a new type of block for the construction of a sustainable house for the Solar Decathlon Middle East 2018 Competition by the team SoLLite-Salalah from Dhofar University, Sultanate of Oman. The aim of the experiment was to create a material for exterior walls' construction that is environmentally friendly, light, easy to transport and assemble, resistant to heat transfer, and also with low manufacturing cost. The paper describes the project SoLLite-Salalah, the experiment itself and provides the results of the tests, which show that the sample block made by the team fulfils the requirements and can be used for the construction of the exterior walls of the house. This report also demonstrates that Solar Decathlon Competitions stimulate research and innovation and promote the idea of efficient housing by educating and training students.