Visual representation of the concept of privacy in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia's houses design: a comparative study of the traditional and contemporary

This paper is part of on-going research looking into the concern of privacy for contemporary Saudi house interior designs (in the Eastern region in specific) from the perspective of female users. The paper focuses on the visual representation of privacy needs within the interior spaces of contemporary Saudi houses. The researcher approached the representation of the conceptual term privacy by tracing its existence in traditional houses and its status in contemporary houses. In the on-going research, as part of a qualitative methodology under the ethnography approach, interviews were conducted with Saudi females who occupy contemporary houses in the Eastern region of Saudi Arabia. Interview participants aged between 21 and 35 years with different cultural backgrounds but resided in the Eastern region, Dammam city. These interviews were to give insight into the current understanding that these participants had about privacy and the way they represented it in their houses. The selected contemporary house data was obtained from the interviews conducted with house owners (Saudi females) as part of on-going research. Two types of analysis were applied to the selected houses: axial analysis as part of the space syntax analysis approach; and privacy levels identification. These analysis tools helped display the representations of privacy in the selected contemporary house through its designs; spatial and architectural design elements are presented that help manage the social need of privacy that contemporary users require in their houses. This investigation led to displaying an updated understanding of the ways in which privacy needs are represented in conceptual houses within the context of the interiors of contemporary Saudi houses. This paper aids the on-going research, in the process of providing information that would help generate a design tool that would assist designers (who are interested in designing development housing projects) in their design process of contemporary houses that meet the social needs of the users, in particular privacy needs