An-Najah Staff

This building type is usually found in most cities of the West Bank and less often in the Gaza Strip. It is a traditional, non-engineered, low-rise construction practice. The main lateral load-resisting system consists of bearing walls with unreinforced concrete strip foundation. The interior masonry walls consist of plain concrete (system #2) or two wythe stone masonry walls filed with plain concrete (system #1). The exterior bearing walls consist of stone masonry facing with a plain concrete backup. Wall thickness ranges from 400 to 500 mm (system #1) to 300-mm thickness in system #2. It is important to note that system #1 represents the old practice for bearing-wall construction while system #2 represented the new trend which was developed and used from the 1950s to the 1970s. This construction is not to practiced at the present time.