Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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 Jukka. He grew up in a home designed by his architect father, a house rooted in regional tradition, natural materials, and family story. 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.
Chapter 2: What does Riyad Joucka believe about home design?
That's coming up right after a short break.
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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.
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Chapter 3: How does modularity affect architectural character?
We've all seen rows of homes so alike, you can only tell them apart by the color of the car parked outside. And 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.
But 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. I'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 I run a practice called Meme, 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 could be given a new life through technology. We've worked in different places across the Middle East, Europe and the US, but the constant is this.
Every project tries to be forward-looking while remaining grounded in space. 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. And 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. This 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 majlis 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. No, 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, the wans for hosting, spaces that extend beyond their functionality to bring people together. Courtyards that cool in shade, spaces that make the outdoors livable.
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