Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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household itself. Wealthy people desired larger lots or combined several small lots into one
large one, and many built their homes at principal arterial streets as an expression of status.
The less endowed citizens built their residences on narrow streets and alleyways behind
large mansions.
Acculturation, that is the impact of external cultures on the local population, has
played a major role in the shift to contemporary architecture and urban design in Saudi
Arabia. For example, during the 1940s, the American ambassador resided in a house in
Jeddah, on the West coast, that was built by a wealthy Syrian merchant. The house was
built with aberrant architecture and used imported building materials. Its style (a detached
structure with balconies and fenestration that suited moderate climate) was largely
borrowed from the villa house, dominant in the Mediterranean Arab countries (Figure 6.9).
Its architecture was an aberration to the prevailing Jeddah house adorned by latticed
windows. The role of wealthy Saudis in shaping contemporary architecture cannot be
underestimated. In the early 1950s, a wealthy Saudi, named Ahmad Kaki, hired a
Lebanese architect, Niqula Salam to design a multi-story apartment building in Al-Khobar.
He hired skilled builders whom he brought specifically to construct his buildings. The new
style was built with steel-reinforced concrete structures (foundations, slabs and beams) and
with walls of cement bricks. 23 Skilled laborers applied electrical and modem plumbing
installations to these new structures badly needed by the oil industry. Soon after, the
affluent nationals began to incorporate the new construction technology, one of the various
novelties the nation's rising income helped introduce.
Government policies and propaganda played a major role in enforcing the use of new
building materials. 24 For example, the first royal decree ever issued by the new state to
regulate land distribution was the fourteen-point ordinance of 1358h/1938. It spelled out a
set of conditions attached to allotting new land to citizens in the cities of Dmamam and Al-
Khobar, at the locus of the industrial activity. It was an effort to encourage the settling of
laborers. It was mandated that recipients use either stone or cement blocks in the
construction of their units. 25 Using imported expertise, the government sought the
construction of large complexes for its ministerial departments, military complexes and the
like, all relying on mass-produced cement and steel construction methods.
Under conditions of expediency, the American oil company (Aramco) used modem,
imported building materials to construct its new industrial complexes, towns and