Vernacular urban configurations still constitute sources of inspiration for architects and urban designers. However, in most cases, instead of extracting ideas and processes, designers, in order to create an architecture that respects identity and cultural values while meeting environmental and economic requirements, tend to favour the imitation of the older configurations and end up with frozen copies from the past. This paper suggests an approach based on abstract concepts drawn from past experiences and filtered and refined through physical and environmental design variables. One of these variables is examined here and serves as a filtering technique; the shading control.