Archinect - News

UNESCO adds three heritage sites to its 'in-danger' list

2023-01-26T12:15:00-05:00

The historic center of the Ukrainian port city of Odesa and sites in Yemen and Lebanon were added to the World Heritage List Wednesday by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). All three sites were simultaneously added to UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger. The statement said that the decision would give Ukraine access to “technical and financial international assistance” to protect and rehabilitate the city center.

Both the Yemeni site and, of course, Odesa were placed under the category in response to the ongoing conflicts afflicting both countries. The latter being of constant "grave concern” to the UN’s cultural body since its inception 11 months ago.

The third site, Rachid Karami International Fair in Tripoli, was designed by Oscar Niemeyer prior to the beginning of his exile from Brazil in the early 1960s. It had been left unfinished as a result of the long Lebanese Civil War that began in 1975. UNESCO’s nomination text cites “[an] alarming state of conservation, the lack of financial resources for its maintenance, and the latent risk of development proposals” as the reason for its inscription.

Mud, the world's ancient building material, deserves to have a bright future

2022-07-21T18:23:00-04:00

Even though the buildings in Sana'a are thousands of years old, they remain "terribly contemporary", says Salma Samar Damluji, co-founder of the Daw'an Mud Brick Architecture Foundation in Yemen. Damluji says it is easy to see why these mud buildings have not lost their appeal – they are well-insulated, sustainable and extremely adaptable for modern use. "It is the architecture of the future," says Damluji.

Yemen’s largest city Sana'a may even supplant Franis Kéré's home country as the world’s leading rammed earth capital, with a host of stunning, UNESCO-protected sites scattered around its Old City area. The material is one of many in an arsenal of alternatives being used to combat high temperatures and reduce global carbon footprints, a scant 5% of which can be attributed to all 54 African nations, as the Pritzker Prize winner pointed out last week in a preview of his own locally-sourced designs for the Triennale di Milano.

Earlier on Archinect: Francis Kéré and others are attempting to muddy up the rising use of concrete in West Africa

Elsewhere in the world, the BBC's Future Planet offers Austrian architect Anna Heringer’s Aga Khan Award-winning METI handmade school design in Bangladesh as a contemporary example of its successful export and application. As she and others pointed out, mud's ability to circumvent the need for more air-conditioning on a warming planet is a huge selling...

Yemen’s “Manhattan on the desert” faces uncertain future amid civil war

2019-10-19T19:45:00-04:00

A result of Yemen’s complex civil war – now in its fifth year – many of the country’s wonders have been damaged or are under threat. While the destruction pales in comparison to the human cost of the conflict, the country’s rich cultural heritage has also been ravaged.

Writing in The Guardian, author Bethan McKernan describes the ways in which Yemen’s ancient cultural heritage has been put at risk by the country’s tragic civil war. Sites that are under threat include the city of Shibam, a 1,700-year-old settlement built from a series of tall masonry structures in the desert.

McKernan writes, “The city’s 3,000 residents still largely follow the traditional living pattern, with in some cases up to 40 family members in the same tower. Animals and tools are kept on the ground floor and food is stored on the second. Elderly people live on the third and the fourth is used for entertaining. Higher levels are occupied by more nimble families, with childless newlyweds on the roof.”

With the Middle East in diplomatic crisis, what will happen to Qatar's building projects?

2017-06-06T12:53:00-04:00

In a stunning move, seven Muslim countries—Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Yemen, and the Maldives—have severed ties to Qatar, a small nation of about 2.7 million people on the north-east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. The crisis underscores the deep divisions running even within Sunni Islam that are often overlooked by the West, which tends to view the Muslim world through the dichotomous prism of Sunni and Shia.

These countries accuse Qatar of sponsoring terrorism, which is to say, primarily, Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood held power briefly in Egypt following the 2011 Revolution before being overthrown in a coup led by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. They are active in many of the seven aforementioned countries.

Qatar also funds Al Jazeera, the widely-watched news channel known for supporting political Islamism and for critiquing the regimes controlling Saudi Arabia and other countries. And Qatar has been criticized for m...