Reimagining traditional architecture for modern needs | Riyad Joucka

0:03Riyad Joucka: You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Think about the neighborhood you grew up in. Could you tell the buildings and houses apart, or did they all kind of look the same? Truth is, most homes today are designed by developers for the market, and not for the people that will live in them. Modularity became a tool for urgent rebuilding, and it worked fast, but often at the cost of character. That's architect and researcher Riyad Juka. He grew up in a home designed by his architect father, a house rooted in regional tradition, natural materials, and family story.

0:42Riyad Joucka: In his talk, he shares how his experience shaped a career spent asking, what if we could build homes that are both efficient and deeply personal? He shares how 3D printing and local craftsmanship could change what our homes look and feel like, and how they can help us reconnect with our cultures. That's coming up right after a short break.

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3:48Riyad Joucka: And now, our TED Talk of the day. What if the places we lived in could truly reflect who we are, and not just what's fastest or cheapest to build? This isn't about everyone designing their own house. It's about rethinking how homes are created in the first place. We've all seen rows of homes so alike you can only tell them apart by the color of the car parked outside. It's designed for efficiency, not identity. Truth is, most homes today are designed by developers for the market and not for the people that will live in them. These template-driven systems leave little room to innovate or think about form or function.

4:32But this reliance on standardization isn't new. Historically, modular systems were not designed to maximize profit. After World War II, when entire cities across Europe were flattened, there were a way to get people back under roofs quickly. Prefabs, kits of parts, temporary housing. Across the world, modularity became a tool for urgent rebuilding, and it worked fast, but often at the cost of character. Sadly today, once again, architecture and heritage are being erased. In places like Gaza, in Sudan, in Ukraine, what disappears isn't just people and buildings. It's memory, belonging, culture.

5:14I'm not here with a simple fix. What I'm saying is, we must rebuild, but we need to rebuild with identity in mind. My name is Riyad Jukka. I'm an architect based in Dubai, where we run a practice called MIM, the Middle East Architecture Network. What excites me is finding ways to fuse novel technologies with local stories. And sometimes that means experimenting with 3D printing and robotics. At other times, it's about rereading a tradition and giving it a contemporary form. Across different scales, from a single object to a cultural building, our projects look at ways at how local materials and craftsmanship can be given a new life through technology.

5:55We've worked in different places across the Middle East, Europe and the U.S., but the constant is this. Every project tries to be forward-looking while remaining ground in its place. And that's what excites me the most about housing. It's where technology and belonging meet most directly. Because our homes aren't just shelters. They should be mirrors of who we are. And to further introduce myself, this is the house that I grew up in, designed by my father. You see, both of my parents are architects. Both of my grandparents were notable artists. So I grew up in a household surrounded by conversations about art, culture and space.

6:33And that's how I see design today. Not as a template, but as something truly rooted in family, stories and place. The house truly reflects the traditions of the region. The scan from Albinat magazine, 1994, wrote about the house. I pulled these from my father's archives. You can see natural light being drawn through skylights, natural stone facade covering the exterior, very typical of houses of the region, a medjlis cast in concrete in the walls themselves. My father describes it as post-traditional architecture because post-modernism never really fit our context. One of the few things him and I agree on when it comes to work.

7:13No, but the house really is a reflection of our traditions, but in a contemporary form. And I keep returning to this traditional wisdom. The majlis for gathering, duans for hosting, spaces that extend beyond their functionality to bring people together. Courtyards that cool in shade, spaces that make the outdoors livable. Berjils or wind catchers that breathe air through a home. Passive design, centuries before we use the word sustainability. Screens that filter light and create privacy. Mashrabiyas, design that shapes atmosphere as much as structure. And we use a similar vocabulary for our house at Maine.

7:54For House 00, the first house we designed, we designed the house around a courtyard with a water body cooling the exterior. The house is wrapped with this corrugated stone facade, echoing the topography of the mountains surrounding it. The house sits atop Jebel Jays, and to me, it's a real interpretation of traditional forms, but in a contemporary home. Cosmos House, we collaborated with artist Julia Ebini to design these mashraviyas. We used algorithms and fractal geometry to filter light into speckled shadows. The house is designed to be 3D printed using sand from the surrounding environment.

8:34The ancient wisdom of desert architecture reinterpreted using digital tools. Beyond practice, I also lead the Adaptive Majlis Research Project at Zayed University. We're looking at ways of how 3D-printed modular systems could help us reinterpret these traditions today. The Mejlis, a unique typology of the region, is being rethought through the lens of modern technology, local craftsmanship and contemporary lifestyles. That same thinking helped shape permutable assemblies. A modular system we developed didn't mean for housing. We asked ourselves, we need to produce a modular system with a certain goal, And that goal is to design for a modular system that is personal, local and expressive.

9:21And we asked ourselves, instead of erasing character, what if modular systems helped showcase it and express it, responding to context, climate and culture without any added cost? Jenne's Great Most in Mali is the world's largest Adobe building. But what's remarkable isn't just the architecture, it's the people. Every year, the community gathers to repair its walls and replaster them, turning maintenance into a festival. The building survives because of the community that maintains it, and that sense of shared responsibility is something that we've lost in many modern cities. Here's how our system works.

10:00A builder, developer, or simply any user enters parameters around their spatial needs, context, climate, into a digital platform. It then generates layouts composed of modules shaped by that context. These parts are then prefabricated off-site, using local, low-carbon materials, produced with precision and little waste. The parts are assembled piece by piece, almost like a modern kit of parts or a set of Legos, if you may, into a home. The process is fast and efficient, but unlike traditional prefab, it does not force sameness. See, traditional modular systems rely on repeated templates. With 3D printing, we can break that mold, designing for efficiency as well as belonging.

10:47The system scales up from house to neighborhood, where every home shares a logic, but no two are alike. It's modularity with character, turning repetition into rhythm. 3D printing makes curves, textures, an ornament, practical at scale. Screens inspired by local patterns, walls that read like the desert, details that Prefab usually cuts out. You see, modularity doesn't have to mean sameness. It can mean variation, intention, and agency. Design shouldn't come from a catalog. It should grow with you, respond to you, and reflect you. And that's what architecture should be. not imposed, not distant, but deeply rooted.

11:35We shouldn't keep repeating the same formulas. We can build differently. We can invite people and communities to shape the spaces we call home. Because design, real design, belongs to everyone. Thank you. Thank you.

11:56Riyad Joucka: That was Riyadh Jouka at TED at BCG in 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Fazey-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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13:39Only at Benihana. Book your table at benihana.com. From filing cabinets to floppy disks, all tech becomes obsolete eventually. But maybe there's a longer-term solution. We start a digital museum on DNA. I actually have some in my fridge here. Wait, so you have a museum on DNA in your refrigerator right now? Yes. Can we back up everything for all eternity? That's next time on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Subscribe or listen to the TED Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.