“Contextual” as a Prerequisite for “Social”. A Survey-Based Adaptation of a Housing Case Study in Abu Dhabi

Abstract

This paper builds up on existing research that questions the alignment properties of most Emirati national housing projects to the distinct sociocultural context and climatic conditions of the United Arab Emirates. Following a recent survey on Emirati nationals and their housing properties in response to cultural daily norms and demanding weather, a paradox between the Islamic–Arab lifestyle and the imported socio-architectural properties of the villa type as well as between the buildings’ environmental behaviour and the climatic context has been consolidated. It is a cultural clash, manifested within the architecture of housing and its double transition from the pre-oil era of the “arish” house to the modernist adaptations of the “sha’abi” house and subsequently to the prevalence of the single, detached house. The “western villa”, bound to postmodernist imaginaries (instead of any contextualism) and piggybacked by an automobile-dominated urbanism, has acted as a tool of social and ethnic segregation. While being subjected to a thorough set of sustainability standards related mostly to efficiency, it fails to address the quotidian and social parameters, both at the architectural and the at the neighbourhood scale. Privacy and social status have sustained the generation of an architecture and urbanity more exclusive, less social, less sustainable. The paper visualizes possible morphological and typological alternatives and examines their impact on the basic urban properties. To its support, a case study on an existing Master Plan of the Emirati National Housing Program shall be conducted, thus quantifying and highlighting the impact in both the architectural and the urban level.