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...
as in the case of the design by the Norr Group,
would not be welcomed by the natives in the UAE
as this might violate their privacy and security. So,
each of the proposed mixed-use facility is to have
its own allocated zone, whether it would be a separate
tower (for offices) or ground floors (for retail
activities). Still, residents can have direct access to
these facilities. On the other hand, zones for the
residents’ basic amenities can be more integrated
with the vertical residential zones to allow for close
proximity. Therefore, they can be distributed in the
ground floors, such as in the Yeang’s approach, or
in some intermediate floors, such as in the case of
the Herzog’s (attached floors) and the Holl’s (sky
bridges) approaches. Some of the proposed
amenities in the previous examples will not be suitable
for the UAE people due to different social and
cultural values. This includes, for example, the
swimming pools with adjoining outdoor sundecks,
such as in the case of the Hertzog’s project.
Instead, the most appropriate amenities for the
UAE natives, as recommended by the Abu Dhabi
Vision 2030 (Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council,
2010), include kindergartens or childcare facilities,
outdoor play spaces, local mosques, a Friday
mosque, parks, a women’s center and local shops.
Some amenities can be provided for serving both
of the inhabitants and the visitors such as the retail
souk (shopping center) in the base floors as proposed
by the Norr Group.
7.2 Design for social connectedness and integration
Bouw (2004) calls for a social and economic perspective
for high-rise residential buildings which
includes psychological and social function of the
housing and the residential environment that
encourage the development and maintenance of
social networks and various types of social solidarity
that change it from a “place to live” to “home”.
Consequently, the design of the high-rise residential
development itself should work in favor of increasing
social interaction and communication among
its residents. This should take place within the
designed public spaces and facilities within the
development. In his study about the residents’
social interaction in high-rise residential developments
in Taipei, Taiwan, Huang (2006) found that
both space types and design elements affect resi-
6 4
dents’ social interaction. Rauterberg et al (1995)
also proved the validity of the hypothesis that a
shared social space with continuous and "rich"
communication possibilities leads to co-operative
behavior.
Encouraging social interaction among residents,
on the one hand, and other local communities
in the surrounding urban settlements on the
other hand, has been advocated in both the
Herzog’s and the Yeang’s approaches but has
been more evident in the Holl’s one. The fareej-inthe-sky
proposal necessitates inherent integration
with the surrounding residential urban agglomeration
to work in harmony with the idea of strengthening
social interaction and communication in the
wider community.
For the interactions among the residents themselves,
the fareej with its spatial configuration as a
tool for social cohesion and integrity and as advocated
in the Urban Structure Plan of Al Ain (Abu
Dhabi Urban Planning Council 2009) can be vertically
resembled in a similar manner to the method
adopted in the Yeang’s approach. The houses of
one fareej, which are accommodated by extended
families and relatives can occupy one or more
floors of the high-rise tower or connected towers.
The fareej houses share the central open vertical
courtyard in a way that gives them the proximity to
one another. The houses are linked with each other
and with the public amenities with sikkak on the
same, or other, floors. A number of fareejs are then
vertically or horizontally grouped together into
‘Local Clusters”. Connectivity among fareejs
(floors) can be horizontal through sky bridges, as
inspired by the Holl’s design, and/or vertical
through internal pedestrian ramps, as employed by
the Yeang’s approach. Residents in these local clusters
can easily walk in the sikkak to a kindergarten
at the same floor or close floors, to an outdoor play
space and to a local mosque as their social connectivity
nodes.
The local mosque is playing a quite vital role
here as a social node in the proposed high-rise
development because it is the place where usually
most of the local residents of neighborhoods in the
UAE meet to perform the five daily prayers. Wider
social spaces of the baraha should work as a residents’
interaction hub in the front of these shared
public amenities. Each baraha contains a safe,