Urban Portraits: Preserving the memory of modern architectural heritage in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract

This chapter describes adopted processes for developing different methodologies to record the United Arab Emirates’s (UAE) architectural modern heritage. The buildings from the post-etihad period can be categorized as ‘recent or modern’ architectural heritage. The UAE is among the few nations to experience fast, pervasive economic growth and social change. The concept of adaptive reuse in UAE architecture and its built environment is a new ‘ideology’. Until very recently, buildings tended to have a lifespan of 30 to 40 years before being demolished and replaced by newer, more ‘trendy’ structures. The timeframe of development, between 1971 - 1990, is relatively short when compared to many European and even North American cities yet nevertheless important to document and preserve as it constitutes part the young’s nation history. The buildings have a physicality that is at once predominant in the contemporaneous Middle East and Gulf region and representative of a modernist ‘tradition’.