Field Report: Twenty Years of Change in the Built Environment of Yemen

Until the  the built environment of North Yemen conveyed a general image of homogeneity, consolidated through centuries of isolation. There were episodic partial occupations of envoys from the centers of Islamic rule, but the area was never controlled by any of the Western powers that dominated, politically or economically, the surrounding countries. The Republican Revolution of , however, introduced many changes in a short period. This report examines a few aspects of the changes that took place in the built environment between  and . These years have local political significance and may be seen as milestones in the progression of the culture of North Yemen toward exposure to the world beyond longestablished natural and political limits:  was the year of the “Reconciliation” between the intervenients of the Civil War that followed the Revolution; and  was the year of the “Unification” of North Yemen and South Yemen. The report attempts to describe some changes in the forms of buildings during this period and their contribution to the transformation of regional vocabularies. It also looks at a few aspects of the country’s urbanization, understood not only in terms of physical expansion, but also as the diffusion to rural situations of values and attitudes from central areas.