Mamun Rashid

UAE urban housing and planning history discourses commonly assume a sharp division between the pre-oil (before the 1950s) and the post-oil (since the 1960s) eras. It is a misleading assumption that flattens historical legacies and exempts pre-oil tribal and maritime built landscape from having a bearing on the emergence of more recent ‘iconic’ villas for the Emiratis/UAE citizens. Besides, status quo urban narratives are further dismissive of non-iconic citizen centric modern housing prototypes of the late 1960s. In this context, our approach is to illustrate the intertwined evolution of contingent driven dwelling features, changes as well as continuities across the pre-oil and post-oil eras. By interconnecting history with user-led spatial changes in current Emirati houses, we argue that, while sustainability has become more of a catchphrase and the ‘iconic' villa façade—the marketing brand, the concept, acceptance, and spatial realization are indeed set by historical overlays ...

This article chronicles the evolution of the UAE’s (United Arab Emirates) residential architecture from its pre-urban beginnings in the dwellings of semi-nomadic tribes and coastal merchants to the ‘iconic' villas of the present. A temporal framing of traditional planning practices, including the collaborative roles of Sheikhs and transnational actors (in global and citywide planning networks), provides a narrative about Emirati houses from the pre-oil era (pre-1950s) to the post-federation era (post-1970s). This mapping of housing transitions is useful because previous research in the UAE’s tribal-modern context has largely ignored continuities and contingencies. The discursive relationship between past and present, top-down planning and user-driven bottom-up practice can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of urban development that does not blindly accept dominant views of iconic forms or planning histories.

Materials, building technology and innovative details in design played an important role in the traditional architecture of the Gulf. Yet due to unprecedented urbanization, vernacular know-how is now being lost or eroded. Besides once ecologically sustainable and energy thrift architectural strategies are now thought to be inappropriate, unsuitable to high-tech buildings and urban settings. Assuming an antithesis to the view that modernity is an antonym for tradition, in this chapter we examine materials, innovative details, and techniques in the Gulf architecture. Underscoring ‘tectonics’, in the context where technology is not self-referential but rather incidental and integrated with design precedents, we examine prudent environmentally informed architectural details and creative decisions used in a region where soaring heat, high humidity and need for security and privacy are major concerns for a living. Across broader geography of the inland and the coasts in the Gulf, Chapter discussion centres on evocative Gulf construction praxis, for example: construction in thermally conducive materials like palm frond, coral, mud and gypsum, the structural ingenuity of tensile velum type structure such as Bait Al Shaar (Bedouin black tent), the dynamic wind-charged passive cooling component badgir (wind-tower) and complex geometrical functionality in glare moderator skin such as mashrabiya. By utilizing examples we conclude that the materials, building details and technology in traditional architecture of the Gulf are not merely metaphors or ‘aesthetic-visual’ remnants from the past, although in the Gulf they are commonly re-introduced in modern buildings as such. On the contrary, their utilization refers to smart functionality, durability and novelty, which have only started to be re-envisioned and refurbished in pioneering best-practice contemporary buildings.

Walk-up flats hold a 'non-elitist' typological building status, and a somewhat de-glorified position in the modern Dhaka city. Nevertheless, these mundane examples are appreciated as socio-spatially enlivened forms by a large section of middle-class urban dwellers in the contemporary city. Evidently, it is one of the dominant forms of multi-unit housing in Dhaka-a prominence similar to other parallel prototypes in rapidly urbanising developing Asian megacities, 1 though none of the world's megacities comes close to Dhaka's population density, allied to diverse localised housing solutions. The capital city of Bangladesh, Dhaka's 14.6 million people live in just

Descriptive and somewhat elusive, sketchy historical notes exist for possible cultural links between ethnic people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh, South Asia, and ethnic people across the national borders in Southeast Asia. Yet, there is a curious lack of research that uses vernacular architecture or ethnic architectural building typology as a key tool to establish, or reiterate, the common proposition that CHT is the western fringe of a Southeast Asian cultural sphere. Historically, language has been a standard tool used by both colonial British rulers and a few anthropologists to consider the topic of reconstruction of cultural heritage in this geographically complex region, while architecture has played an incidental part. In this article, we examine the stilt or platform typology of vernacular architecture of the CHT as a tool to reflect on the inter-ethnic cultural position of the CHT. The chosen analytical framework hinges on the notion that architecture is constructive, in parallel to language, in establishing a heritage position. The concluding findings of the article establish CHT as a historic region with shared Southeast Asian building-cultural features, notwithstanding the possibility of correspondence to early Austronesian building heritage.

Ethnographic surveys of building processes rarely feature in mainstream architectural history. The curious dearth of studies derives perhaps more from the absence of a relevant methodological orientation and cross-disciplinary collaboration than a lack of serious interest in the building process itself. By drawing on building methods and know-how from an oral culture, in this essay, we propose that sentient building processes are useful means for constructing one seamless history that transcends limited disciplinary representations. We also pursue the possibilities of collaboration on ethnographic knowledge across vernacular architecture and anthropology. The essay discusses concepts and methods including visual methods. Informed by current anthropology, images are additionally utilised to interpret architectural temporality, a biographical view of dwelling, situated learning, technology–culture non-duality, and socio-spatial references. By intertwining a cross-disciplinary methodological position with methodological techniques and by tying conditions and potentials of human life to the very act of building, concerning an indigenous culture without any written history, we advocate vernacular architecture’s potential to complement mainstream architectural history.

ABSTRACT Historically, geographers, anthropologists and colonial British administrators (1860–1947) frequently mentioned two ethno-geographical categories – khoungtha and toungtha – when referring to the tribal groups in the Chittagong Hills of Bangladesh. Some of these early works considered the livelihood patterns of these groups and the nature of their social and economic interactions. However, a discussion of the changes to their vernacular built environment has escaped any serious investigation. Using empirical findings, this article examines the changes to architectural practices of lowland and highland groups in the socially and ethnically complex region of the Chittagong Hills. Narrowing the discussion to the toungtha Mru ethnic group, this article also examines religious patterns, building techniques and spatial changes in a remotely placed, relatively inaccessible part of the hills where the built environment is still a strong cultural priority.

The socio-cultural significance of the dwelling has been illuminated in several anthropological studies of ethnic communities in Asia. To some extent, this interest is also shared with architects examining vernacular dwellings. Yet few studies approach these examples primarily as ecologically placed architectural entities, with a temporal-ritual ambience. Drawing on this limitation, we assume a position beyond culture-nature, built-unbuilt or sacred-profane dichotomies in order to examine the case of the Mru of the Chittagong Hills. In doing so, we also reflect on the influences between the disciplines of architecture and anthropology in understanding nuanced meanings of dwelling and related spaces. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the article discusses the interrelationship between religion, economy and architecture. It establishes that the function of architecture is complex, and in a traditional community where religion and worldview have an interchangeable relationship with culture, nature and economic behaviour, it is on that premise that meaningful architectural spaces are created.

Abstract The concept of designed green outdoor spaces that can be included in inner-city Sydney residential areas has recently generated much interest among savvy developers and architects alike. Given the paucity of open park-like spaces in inner Sydney and the current drive for urban consolidation—though the concept has been endorsed—yet, the detailed implications of such green spaces in the design and layout of residential complexes have received less attention. Drawing on ‘architect-user’ interface for analysis, this article centres discussion around a study that was conducted at designed residential complexes with perimeter block configuration in an inner Sydney precinct. It uses a questionnaire survey, architects’ interviews and observations. T-tests for equality of means are carried out on use variables of outdoor spaces to find out whether there is a significant difference between the dwelling height groups and complex groups. A narrative of space use is then drawn in with the responses of involved architects. Some of the questions that we probe are the following: Do the users in particular higher density residential settings value thoughtfully designed spaces? Are designers aware of the users’ responses to the outdoor spaces? Given the fact that designers rarely revisit a completed project—is there congruence between the users’ perceptions of the outdoor spaces and the designers’ initial intentions? Results show that designed features and green spaces are equally effective in creating successful outdoor spaces.

UAE urban housing and planning history discourses commonly assume a sharp division between the pre-oil (before the 1950s) and the post-oil (since the 1960s) eras. It is a misleading assumption that flattens historical legacies and exempts pre-oil tribal and maritime built landscape from having a bearing on the emergence of more recent 'iconic' villas for the Emiratis/UAE citizens. Besides, status quo urban narratives are further dismissive of non-iconic citizen centric modern housing prototypes of the late 1960s. In this context, our approach is to illustrate the intertwined evolution of contingent driven dwelling features, changes as well as continuities across the pre-oil and post-oil eras. By interconnecting history with user-led spatial changes in current Emirati houses, we argue that, while sustainability has become more of a catchphrase and the 'iconic' villa façade-the marketing brand, the concept, acceptance, and spatial realization are indeed set by historical overlays of local and transnational experimentation, arbitration, and adaptation. Thus, the current design and policy led national housing prototypes would be corrective, regenerative and successful if assembled through an iterative design process that accommodates emerging sustainable frameworks as well as user-driven spatial interventions. This approach sustains the socio-physical legacies of the Emirati houses and their cultural legitimacy in the built-environment.

This experiment raises several critical questions and
dilemmas:
Illusion of reality: The hyper-real images created by the
AI blur the line between reality and illusion. What is the
value of architecture when it becomes indistinguishable from
a dream or a fantasy?
Devaluation of architectural expertise: If AI can generate
hyper-real visuals without the input of an architect's design
expertise, what becomes of the architect's role in the design
process? Does architecture become reduced to a visual art
form rather than a functional discipline?