TOPIC
The Value of Local Knowledge and Resources: Exploring the Possibilities for
Infrastructural and Architectural Growth in the Middle East

Given the current global challenges in terms of the climate emergency,
increasing global populations and disproportionate allocation of resources,
evenly distributing the population across the country within balanced rural
and urban settings may become an environmental strategy. This project will
therefore, assess the countries’ places of outstanding beauty, history and
heritage, natural resources as sustainable materials, and energy sources.
Using a comparative method, the smallest and richest countries of Middle
East such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will be analysed as an
example of successful integration of the countries’ resources.
The goal is to research communities’ lives and their cultural heritage. As
well as learning about the existing cities and the ways characteristics can be
transferred into the rural settings to modernise countryside living, without
losing the cultural value. Moreover, it will consider how these modernised
villages can co-exist within their natural surroundings. The investigation
will conclude the means and possibilities of transferring and adapting the
successes of the richest countries in the world within the largest developing
countries of the Middle East.
My personal aspirations in the following topic combine the desire to improve
the environment for people in third world countries, using local
knowledge, resources, and customs and in balance with nature. The
architectural career I foresee for myself is to help create sustainable cities
and ways of cohabiting with nature.

OBJECTIVE & METHODOLOGY
Conceived as a counterbalance to the developing Neom project in Saudi
Arabia, promoted by the country’s government, the research project will
explore the cultural practices in the largest Middle Eastern countries,
including Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. The main observations
suggest that such large territory countries have a high percentage of
poverty and poor housing facilities.
The existing global tendency to expand and develop an urbanistic
lifestyle into non-urban areas often inflicts various disadvantages.
Nevertheless, this approach is pursued by governments as is improves
infrastructure, increases economic prosperity and, arguably, citizens’
quality of life. This often leads to the overpopulation of cities and
insufficient financing in the rest of the country.
The research methods include interviews with the communities and
representatives of political institutions where possible (with
appropriate ethics approval); photography and videography will be used
as a main media resource; practical research into the sites’ properties and
environmental characteristics, such as types of soil, sands, location and
quality of water body and vegetation; developing designs of potential
city-villages through sketches, drawings, schematic diagrams; research
into construction challenges and requirements for populating the Sahara
Desert.