The Wall

Abstract

Is architecture an art of wall design? Why the Man had created the wall? Do we need all walls that we built? What are the urban consequences of building walls? Is safety one of major reasons for creating the walls? How mass communication can contribute to safe living environments with fewer and better walls?

Since early human history, the Man has invented the wall to contain the human life and to achieve different sorts of domains such as safety, privacy, community. In many cases the walls have developed to have symbolic roles and meanings such as dominance and power rather.  The different application types have transformed the cities to a forest of walls. Therefore, the wall is an important component that  creates forms and characters, contains activities, needs, and realizes strategies such as safety and sustainability. Each particular society has developed a particular wall culture which decides how to apply the wall in the different conditions of the built environment. This method has strong relationship with the local conditions, heritage, and the nation’s cultural, economic and social structure. Therefore, wall  has an important role in creating the local architectural character in any particular society .

This paper is discussing  these issues by studying  how the demand for safety creates demands for applying and forming the walls in our built environment. The paper will use the fence wall as a case study and  how it had been applied in old cities to achieve safety? which kind of decision making and communication model had been applied in these cities to form and build the wall as safety structure?  How these issues are applied in the present? The paper is using cases from cities in Middle East.

The paper concludes that in order to make architecture and urban design responsive to safety issues, it is necessary to establish better understandings about the wall as an important design component for our buildings and cities where we form and built less, better and smarter walls.  Architectural media can be an important to support the wall safety functions by  creating a contiguous arena for communication between the community, decision makers,  and professionals which can raise their awareness and involvement in built environment safety as an alternative for building more walls

Keywords: Wall, Design, Urban Design, Safety, Rules, Media, Architectural Education.