The Mirrored Public

Abstract

In Islamic societies, the segregation of gender typically leads to the courtyard house, with its characteristic feature of enclosure. However, there are other types of housing in the Middle East. By looking at tower houses in the Yemenite city of Sana’a, the author questions the validity of the widely used model of interpretation of the separation of urban space into the opposition between public and private space. The evaluation of architecture with respect to various studies of the gender relationship in traditional urban Yemeni society leads to a much more complex and dynamic picture of living and the replacement of privacy by a second form of public space used exclusively by women.