Vol :37 Issue No.1 2012 - Open House International

cases, have been exclusively occupied with functional
issues, architectural features and/or energy
conservation. Just to mention a few examples: 930
Poydras Residential Tower, Louisiana, New Orleans,
USA (Minner 2010), Residential Glass Tower, Los
Angeles, USA (World Architecture News 2008) and
Turning Torso Residential Tower, Malmö (Design
Build Network 2010). Furthermore, the mainstream
international research about high-rise residential
buildings is currently focusing on environmental
sustainability, with little concern about the community
social and cultural aspects (see for example:
Niu 2004, Lai and Yik 2009, Baldwin et al 2008,
Guertler and Smith 2006). Wener and Carmalt
(2006) add that there is limited research on human
behavioral and social responses to issues of sustainability
in buildings in general, and even less so
for high-rise buildings.
Led by multinational property development
firms such as Emmar, Al Dar and Nakheel, the UAE
has witnessed accelerated development of high-rise
residential buildings, albeit with a slower pace after
the world economic crises in 2008. The shortage in
the number of housing units in the UAE which was
expected to reach to 27900 units in 2010 (DED
2010) increases the demand for high-rise residential
buildings. This need on the one hand, and the
social failure of some world examples of high-rise
residential buildings coupled with the negligence of
the social and cultural aspects in the contemporary
designs of residential towers in the UAE, on the
other hand, poses the research main question:
“how can the design of high-rise residential buildings
in the UAE be more community-oriented?”. In
this research community is defined according to the
Cambridge Dictionary (2011) as the people living
in one particular area or people who are considered
as a unit because of their common interests,
social group or nationality. In this case, the UAE
native communities living, or would live, in high-rise
residential buildings are the target. Community-oriented
design in this research means the design
which considers the unique social, cultural, functional
and environmental needs of the local community
for which it is going to be applied.
To tackle the research question, the research
begins with a brief investigation for the reasons
behind the societal failure of high-rise residential
buildings in the West. Then, the research undertook
a brief review of the status quo of community-relevant
dimensions in the design of high-rise residential
buildings in the UAE. Afterwards, the research
examined some recent different design initiatives for
achieving community-oriented design in this type of
housing through four approaches in different parts
of the world. Based on both the lessons learnt from
these global initiatives and the local dimensions of
housing design in the UAE, especially the fareej traditional
housing pattern, a new theoretical framework
that might contribute to realizing the needs of
the native UAE communities is proposed. The
adopted method of the research is mainly qualitative
and relied on the analysis of the community-relevant
issues in the design of high-rise residential
buildings. Case studies were utilized, when relevant,
especially in investigating the societal failure
of the high-rise residential developments and the
recent approaches about community-relevant
aspects in the design of them.
2 . COMMUNITY-RELEVA NT PROBLEMS
OF THE DESIGN OF HIGH-RISE RESI-
DENTIAL BU IL DINGS
In general, the community-relevant problems associated
with the past experience of high-rise residential
developments, especially in the West, included
children’s safety, crime, depersonalized living
spaces and phobias (Yuen 2005). A clear example
for those problems is the St. Louis's Pruitt-Igoe highrise
development. Pruitt-Igoe, completed in 1956,
followed the planning principles of Le Corbusier
and the International Congress of Modern
Architects, in keeping the grounds and the first floor
free for community activity. "A river of trees" was to
flow under the buildings. Each building was given
communal corridors on every third floor to house a
laundry, a communal room, and a garbage room
that contained a garbage chute. Unfortunately, the
river of trees soon became a sewer of glass and
garbage. The mailboxes on the ground floor were
vandalized. The corridors, lobbies, elevators and
stairs were dangerous places to walk. They
became covered with graffiti and littered with
garbage and human waste. In 1972, after spending
more than $5 million in vain to cure the problems
at Pruitt-Igoe, the St. Louis Housing Authority
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open house international Vol.37 No.1, March 2012 A ‘Fareej-in-the-Sky’: Towards a Community-oriented Design... Khaled Galal Ahmed