Morphing Sands

Climate-responsive courtyard housing in Jeddah using WFC

by Ramy Ayoub, Hani Karime & Marina Osmoloyska, IAAC MaCAD, 2026

Tutors: James McBennett, Lucia Leva Fuentes, Laukik Lad

Morphing Sands proposes a rule-based approach to urban housing that integrates climate logic, vernacular principles and computational design for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The project reimagines the dense, courtyard-based mixed-use block inspired by the city’s historic urban patterns, internal courtyards and traditional Roshan façades.

Monoceros 3 serves as the core generative engine for a constraint-based system. Building elements - residential units, commercial units, circulation cores, courtyards and shading devices - are decomposed into modular tiles. Adjacency rules encode functional relationships, orientation constraints, environmental logic and urban regulations. The solver generates spatial configurations that satisfy all rules simultaneously, while tile weights and density adjustments allow parametric iteration toward optimized layouts.

The design integrates passive strategies including cross-ventilation, shading systems, a wind tower system and thermal integration, achieving approximately 45 percent energy reduction compared to conventional approaches. The result is a contemporary interpretation of Jeddah’s spatial heritage, where computational tools and climatic intelligence produce dense, livable urban fabric.