Environmental influence on the built heritage, Saudi Arabia regions

Abstract

The main concern of this paper is to explore and analyze the influence of the environment on the built heritage in Saudi Arabia. It is hypothesized that the environment formed and initiated the main features of the built heritage in Saudi Arabia. This influence, in addition, is adapted through different variables such as cultural, natural, and climate, including religion, traditions, geology, location, land nature and soil, and macroclimate and microclimate. These variables, in fact, formed the main features of the built heritages, including pattern, type and character. Other external factors, to some extent, also influenced the architectural elements of the built heritage, especially the interrelationship with other civilizations (Wang et al in Heritage 4:2942–2959. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage4040164, 2021). The investigation of the environmental variables, therefore, used to define the influence of each variable on the main features of different buildings of the built heritage, particularly houses, and palaces in Saudi Arabia. The analysis, moreover, focused on the shared features of these buildings in the main regions of Saudi Arabia. The purpose is to define that although the climate and the natural variables may differ in Saudi Arabia, the built heritage shares the main urban pattern and architectural features mostly as a result of the influence of the cultural variable, particularly the religion, traditions, and habits. In other words, cultural variables have a direct influence on defining the shared features of the built heritage. Furthermore, the rationale of this analysis is to prove that the built heritage is highly valuable because it was initiated and developed as a part of its environment. It afforded its residents with their religious, traditions, habits, social, and living necessities. Therefore, it requires protection for the future generations in Saudi Arabia (Alnaim MM (2022b) J Archit Plann 34:223–238. https://doi.org/10.33948/JAP-KSU-34-2-5, 2022b; Spahic in A conceptual framework for sustainability in Islamic architecture: the significance of the islamic concepts of man and the environment. Conference on Technology and Sustainability in the Built Environment, 3–6 January 2010. Riyadh, 2010).