Planning for the sun: urban forms as a Mesopotamian response to the sun

Abstract

Abstract Urban forms create complex spatial environments which form, and are formed by, the lives of their inhabitants. Part of the construction of any urban environment is the formation of a light environment created by the interaction of the architecture with the changing natural light conditions through the day and over the year. This paper considers the construction of an appropriate and meaningful light environment to have been an essential factor in the development of urban form in ancient Mesopotamian cities, where strong summer sunlight constituted a serious limit to human activity and the sources of natural light held a high symbolic and religious value. The form and layout of ancient Mesopotamian cities is here examined in terms of the sort of light environments the architecture would have produced. Using the example of residential housing at ancient Ur, an analysis of the urban light environment demonstrates both functional and symbolic manipulation of sunlight through architectural form.