Sos rescie: A children's village in southern Jordan provides peace and stability for orphans. Its scale was evolved with the needs of children in mind, and its design and construction have re-awakened local crafts and urban morphology.

Aqaba is a dump -- literally in some ways, because the neighbouring port of Eilat in Israel throws its sewage into the Red Sea with no consideration for the Jordanians. The technical assessor, Salma Samar Damluji, reticently describes the general urban fabric as being 'rather drab', with only a couple of old buildings of any quality.

The SOS programme has been set up to cater for orphaned children, and the Aqaba SOS children's village is the third such establishment in Jordan, all of which have been designed by Jafar Tukan & Partners. The aim was to create an intimate setting, related to the scale of children, and based on what remains of the local vernacular architecture. Eight family houses, each run by a 'mother', comprise the main part of the complex; there is a staff house, and an administration building, as well as subsidiary spaces and courts. In the centre is a square on which pedestrian paths and gardens focus. Shade, calm and reticence are intended to be the chief characteristics of the complex. On the south side of the site, near the main road there are facilities shared with the local community: a kindergarten, supermarket, pharmacy and sports hall.

Construction is conventional for the area. In-situ concrete slabs, beams and columns are surrounded by locally manufactured infill-cavity concrete blocks. But outer skins are of coursed local granite rubble, delicately made in recollection of the traditional midmak. The lost technique was at first unfamiliar to the builders, but after some experiments, they became proficient, and managed to finish the work ahead of schedule.

Damluji reports that the project is remarkably successful, both constructionally and in social terms (though there are problems with drainage, perhaps exacerbated by earthquakes). Traditional climate control methods: mass and mashrabiyyas (screens made of local hardwood) modified the harsh sunshine; wind towers were intended to generate cooling air movement through the rooms; massing ensured that the whole complex is shaded by vegetation and buildings, and given breath by prevailing breezes.

Sadly, the wrong lessons have been learned by local builders from the SOS village. Coursed rubble is now de rigueur in developments aspiring to be posh, with the Disneyesque elements of the SOS village emphasized. The more subtle lessons of climate control and geometry have been ignored. The SOS wind towers did not work well, and are no longer used. But as local architect Ammar Khammash commented, 'The SOS Village project was an attempt to reconsider how the decisions of the past might be applied today, but ... this is a laborious task'. Damluji suggests that it is a riposte to the current Jordanian development practice set up 'largely to serve the marketing of industrialized building materials [which has] on the socio-economic level, marginalized the input of local communities'.