Shanasheel is the Iraqi mashrabiya — a carved wooden oriel that overhangs the lane from the first floor of an Ottoman-era merchant house. In Basra's Al-Ashar quarter the arrangement is fixed: plain pale-yellow brick below, and above it a projecting box of mulberry and sidr lattice set with orange, green, red and blue glass.

It is climate work before it is ornament. The lattice shades the alley, pulls a cross-draught through the room, and lets the household watch the canal without being watched. This system inherits that logic: a quiet brick ground, dark timber structure that projects and casts shadow, and colour that arrives only as light through glass.