I am fully conscious, as a contemporary architect, that every design I undertake must not only engage with the context and environment of the Arab world but also extend the identity of the project and find a significant resonance in the international context. The world, despite its multitude of variety, has become a small place where any action has a global resonance and where ideas and the sense of a common cultural identity are fully shared and lived on a daily basis.

I believe that our identities, as individuals and as societies, are both different due to our personal particularities and similar due to the common root of our being. This root of our identity is sometimes best appreciated through a true understanding of the concept of tradition.

Essentially, the word ‘tradition‘ (from the Latin tradere meaning ‘to hand over‘) means the handing down from one generation to another, usually by word of mouth. This is the handing down of knowledge, forms and disciplines – especially religious rituals – but it also implies a transmission of ideas to all aspects of life. However, Tradition has a more profound meaning than simply the transmission of manners and customs of a particular people in an anthropological sense. It means something more profound and can best be described as a divinely inspired way of being which the Buddhists refer to as The Tao and the Muslims as The Right Way (Al Sirat al Mustakim).

‘The Sacred as such is the source of Tradition and what is traditional is inseparable from the sacred. … Tradition extends the presence of the sacred into a whole world, creating a civilization in which the sense of the sacred is ubiquitous’. (S.H.Nasr)