ASIA Yemen’s Tower House Reuse Once Sana’a became a UNESCO heritage site, adaptive reuse and conservation have become more popular, among both government and private bodies. However, government bodies are not sufficiently funded, and can only take on a handful of projects at a time with no guarantee of fast, efficient completion. In contrast, private ownership sees more successful, speedy activity. Private ownership adaptive reuse has a variety of outcomes, given that each project’s reuse function, aesthetic and reparation methods rely solely on the owner themselves and therefore differ from case to case. The government’s jurisdiction in private adaptive reuse only extends towards approval of reuse and control over the conservation portion of reuse. The government has issued an official manual of guidance on conservation methods and strategies to apply; it is not widely spread, however, so private owners do not use or refer to it (except for some very basic rulings), and there is no enforced penalty for not following the manual to push private owners towards using it more. As such, private owners have their own to reuse their tower houses, either by: ● ●
Completely reusing all floors, or Only reusing the ground floor.
Popular choices for the reuse function are: ● ●
Art galleries, hotels, and/or cultural houses (in case the whole tower house is being rehabilitated), or Grocery stores, or other service/facility-providing spaces (in case only the ground floor is being reused).
One of the basic rulings previously mentioned that private owners make attempts to follow is the conservation of the house’s exterior facade. However, it is not always followed; more and more private owners are going about reparation and material replacement according to their own tastes. This has resulted in a merging of the new and eccentric, with the old architectural traditions. The trend is not looked at kindly by many, but it is possible to view this change as the emergence of a new culture, brought on by new context and circumstances, and an eclectic aesthetic.
