ART OF BUILDING IN YEMEN

Considered as a classic in Vernacular and Traditional Architecture of the Middle East, this book, first published by MIT Press in 1981, suddenly reappears in an revised and amplified version. The contents of this book remain a mandatory reference for its extraordinary and singular documental value, which includes the contents of the first edition, and the research made in 2006, that gives a global vision of a unified Yemen territory. This research includes all kinds and styles of buildings, and the materials that they have been build with, crossing geomorphic conditions and cultural movements. Part One, Space and Form, covers the environment and its control by the definition of territorial limits, the basic types of shelter and the basic types of settlements from desert outgrowths and hilltop hamlets to urban centres of trade and polity. The book's Part Two, Regional Surveys, notes architectural variations and distributions from the coastal strip to the midlands, highlands and eastern plateau. The third Part, Architectural Syntheses, shows the architectural syntheses achieved in cities, the confront with the process of modernity, the shapes of resistance of local identities and the results of the concern with the idea of historic preservation.