TYPICAL AND ATYPICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF YEMENI ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

Yemen has a great variety of climatic and topographic characteristics, and the building materials, too. This led to the emergence of various types of building architecture and city planning in the various geographic regions. This calls for the necessity of gathering, tabulating, and classifying these works in terms of time and place in order to draw the characteristics of each region, and every era.. The problem of the research is that there are no previous rules or studies which addressed the classification and tabulation of architectural characteristics, particularly in Yemeni cities, the thing that requires gathering and classifying these works. This paper aims to analyze the Yemeni architectural products, tabulate it, and draw its constant typical characteristics and the growing atypical ones - over time and under the influence of human and environmental parameters. The research addressed introduction consisting of (the problem, the aim, the methodology). The discussion also to the historical stages of Yemeni architecture, and a theoretical method for classifying the architectural characteristics of the Yemeni architecture. The paper ended by confirming the existence of constant architectural characteristics in all buildings of Yemeni cities and regions. Despite the variance in climatic and topographic conditions, they may be named the typical characteristics. There are architectural characteristics that differed from one region to another, in spite of the similar customs and traditions and the similarity of climatic conditions. These were named the atypical characteristics.