A CONCEPTUAL ANALYTIC MODEL OF THE VOCABULARY OF THE ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE

The architectural heritage constitutes an integral part of any nation’s identity, culture and pride.Elements of the past Islamic architecture were designed and built to respond effectively anddynamically to people’s physical, environmental, social, physiological and religious requirements at their time. At present, architects used to incorporate various elements of the Islamic historical buildings in their design work. They usually take into account the configuration of the element s form only and evaluate whether it would fit into the present design scheme. They subsequently decide whether to use it with some or no adjustments. Such blind copy- paste approach would only transfer the element s form though strips it from its historical context and values. Furthermore, it would create a wrongly spelled architectural vocabulary that is detached from its historical context, ill-fitted into the present design context and would be misinterpreted by futurearchitects. The paper argues that architect should not comprehend the hidden values of thehistorical elements only but also how values interacted and are integrated into these elements. Bydoing so, the architect would be able to correctly perceive and read these elements thus incorporate it successfully in his/ her design. The research proposes a conceptual model for analyzing and interpreting architectural heritage’s vocabulary and incorporating it into the present architectural design of buildings. The target of this research is to help professional architects and architectural students to develop in-depth understanding of the Islamic architectural precedents and implement it properly in the architectural design of buildings.