HerStory of Jeddah:
Women’s Storytelling Centre & Forum
Project by Constance Hui
The Inevitable Emergence of Design
The Saudi Arabia Vision 2030 giga-projects, many claiming to promote ‘sustainable tourism,’ prompted a reflection on what it really means. By entering the global tourism market, shouldn’t Saudi Arabia be aiming to showcase its true authenticity to visitors, rather than to exploit new land and create an isolated luxurious experience facing the Red Sea?
Perhaps through the telling of stories by the local people, stories passed down generations; and women ought to be allowed to participate in this process, breaking through the traditional views towards women’s place in society and the social norms restricting women’s voice and activity within the private domain.
This project would act as a built manifestation of the issue of women’s integration into society. To ground this concept, storytelling became the activity that informed the typology of the building(s). Jeddah was selected as my site due to it being historically the most cosmopolitan city among the Saudi cities – hence had the potential to be the first city to bring change.
This storytelling masterplan in the Old Town of Jeddah aspired to, while preserving the Arab-Muslim oral tradition and Jeddah’s building heritage, encourage women’s social integration by providing women from all generations with a safe place in the public domain to meet, learn, and have their voices heard. I identified the activities that my intervention aimed to accommodate, which were separated into three buildings with three different user groups as the target users respectively; the more future-looking Forum building was developed in detail.
Grasshopper + Ladybug tools were integrated into the design process to develop a building responsive to site-specific environmental conditions, as well as to drive the configuration of building massing such that it receives a reduced amount of radiation and energy used to maintain indoor comfort – aiming for an architectural product with lower environmental impact but great social impact.
It is important to note that although computational tools were used in the formal development of the scheme, the initial massing had first been developed and defined before putting it through the analysis – with a zoning strategy informed by local vernacular’s response to climate, urban grain, precedent studies and functional requirements. The parameters within which the individual zones were allowed to be adjusted had also been set by me.
Timber, which used to be used as reinforcement in the load-bearing coral stone walls in local houses, would be the primary structure of the proposed building, deploying a ‘piloti’ strategy to avoid massive transfer structures; and the characteristic Red Sea coral stones would be used as cladding where thermal mass is desirable. Another distinctive feature of the local vernacular was the rawashin, a wooden bay window that used to screen women in the house from being seen while allowing air flow to ventilate the house in the humid climate; the proposal reinterpreted this into a modern version – a reading bay at the library space. It was time women had the right to play a role in public life as they desired, without any fear of infringing social norms.
