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

Khaled Galal Ahmed
open house international Vol.37 No.1, March 2012 A ‘Fareej-in-the-Sky’: Towards a Community-oriented Design...
11 a
11 b 11 c
Figure 11 a&b&c. a) The courtyard house, b) sekkah and c) baraha as illustrated in Abu Dhabi Vision 2030 (Source: Abu
Dhabi Urban Planning Council 2009).
7 . A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR
A COMMU NITY-RESPONSIVE DESIGN
O F HIG H-RISE R ES IDEN TIAL BU I LD -
INGS IN THE U AE
The main problem in many high-rise residential
buildings in the UAE is the treatment of the residential
tower as a stand-alone building. Inspired by
the thoughts of the Herzog & de Meuron’s
approach: “houses stacked in the sky”, the TR
Hamzah & Yeang’s approach: "city-in-the-sky" and
the Steven Holl Architects’ approach: "open city
6 2
within a city", the main proposed theme is, instead,
built upon the idea of designing the high-rise development
as a suburban portion of the urban context
which of course is to be relevant to the UAE: the
fareej. The following detailed concepts of the proposed
theoretical framework do not mean to
describe a final advocated model design for the
high-rise residential buildings in the UAE, rather,
they are conceptual guidelines hopefully leading to
such a design. The advocated seven concepts are
actually a blend of the lessons derived from the relevant-to-the-UAE
mentioned above global design