Tectonics in the Gulf Architecture: ‘Modernity of Tradition’ in Buildings

Abstract

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.