A STUDY ON DISTRIBUTION OF HOUSES WITH DOMICAL VAULT ROOFS IN HERAT CITY - AFGHANISTAN

Abstract

Traditional houses in Western Afghanistan have domical vault roofs. Such houses are not limited to the Old City but are instead distributed throughout the municipal area of Herat. For this study, we used satellite images from 2017 to locate 11,754 houses with domical vault roofs within the municipal area of Herat and then calculated their density. Field surveys were conducted to investigate the sites with a higher density of such houses. The study identified seven high-density sites and classified them into three groups; 1) monumental, 2) pre-1960s old residential villages along canals and 3) post-1960s residential settlements at the urban fringe.