House XVIII’s double window has served as the logo for the Umm el-Jimal Project because it’s the most iconic visible remain in a site full of functional domestic architecture. The masonry of the windows themselves is very fragile, and their stabilization has been the major technical challenge of the AFCP House XVII-XVIII Preservation Project. These slides illustrate some of the challenges of conserving the double window, as a key goal of the AFCP project.

Summary

We concluded that the minimum repair for stabilization of the Double Window should include: (1) the repair of the wall and sill supporting the windows; (2) reinforcing of the south window post, and (3) the relieving of the excess weight on the south window arch.  How we did this will be the subject of the next blog post, Double Window Preservation: The Solution.

Photographs by Bert de Vries and Muaffaq Hazza.