The Souk and Society in Qatar Cohabitation Heritage

His highness the Aga Khan boldly emphasized in a speech published in 1978 the accelerating loss of our cultural identity while acknowledging the valuable lessons extracted from the past. The speech reinforces the important role of cherishing the past accomplishments, pride, values, ethics and unity. These were the classification of previous generation. My thesis study design aims to diffuse the boundaries between the society and the local built heritage through the concept of cohabitating heritage, achieved through cohabitating the essence and authenticity of a local traditional souk within the presence of the residential districts. The study highlights two competing concepts 'intangible heritage' verse 'tangible heritage'. The first concept 'intangible heritage' is an important factor in maintaining cultural diversity in the face of growing globalization. The second concept 'tangible heritage' reflects the legacy of physical artifacts inherited from our ancestors. Both concepts combined provoke a sense of engaging both cultural contexts to its content in a sustainable approach. Several multilayered tools used to develop reliable results. The tools included an interview and a game design. Both tools were conducted in a systematic way to produce valuable and reliable results which targets a wider audience and a larger perspective. The first tool in the process targeted the designer behind both souk waqif and souk al Wakrah, Mohammed Ali. The interview evolved around the philosophy of the souk, the design, the heritage element within the revival process, the narrators of the souk as the essential element of the revival process. The second step of the process was targeted towards the community the researcher wanted to design a new concept of traditional souk within residential districts therefor an essential part of the design was based upon the community. In order to produce a design for the community the researcher designed a simple game design that targeted the entire member of the family categorized into: father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, boys and girls. Each age group can easily be part of my game design questionnaire which as a response will be a reliable source in designing the final souk design. This study concludes the potential to transform the domestic spaces within the contemporary needs of the current society imposes the adaptability of traditional souks in blending the traditional verse the contemporary. Traditional souk manifests the success of previous generation in constructing the souk according to their environmental needs, social needs and spiritual needs. Finally the adaptation of the traditional souk within the contemporary set of residential districts and its capacity to accommodate to the diverse needs of several generations reveals the potential to encourage the transformations without losing our sense of Islamic values, jurisprudential rules, traditions, culture and norms and may offer opportunities to revive the local identity among Qatar. It is important to sustain the characteristics of the traditional Qatari architecture achieved through the promotion of internal over external development, Articulation through the use of light, a direct relationship with natural elements, the articulation of internal spaces which reflect the construction techniques and finally a strict attention towards privacy. Thus the traditional souk architecture within residential district provokes the best example of cohabitating heritage by diffusing boundaries between heritage and society while creating a continuous thread of previous generation accomplishments, pride, values, ethics and unity.