Architectural identity demystified : visual voices from the Arab world

This chapter offers a positional interpretation and interrogates the irony of identity, tradition and modernity by critically outlining a number of visual voices that represent selected interventions developed within the Arab World. Through a reading of trends that emerged over the past few decades an effort is made to place such a reading in focus by outlining contextual geo-cultural politics and their inferences on the shaping of architectural identity. An approach for a deeper insight into contemporary Arab architecture within which inevitable trends co-exist is framed based on positivistic and anti-positivistic positions and their underlying ontological and epistemological perspectives