The settlement spread out along the main roads that, following the existing wadi’s, border the project area.

The built up areas develop along the wadi’s valleys and their sites are generally flat, permitting an easy building of groups of houses, small condominiums, farms or factories.

The settlement system is denser to the West where Abha is expading towards the airport.

The rural landscape is deeply connected to the settlement and the water system.

The wadi’s cross the site irrigating the farming plots located on the slopes of the hills. These are mainly organized with terraces that, retaining the earth good for cultivation of vegetables and grains, create a very interesting landscape.

The complicated morphology of the site consists in high ridges and long and narrow valleys along the wadi’s.

The principal valleys, crossing the project area from the West to the East, preserve often some vegetation and are defined by terraced fields. The majority of the roads, except for the highways, follow the articulated topography of the site whose elevation vary from 1700 up to 2400 meters.

The site is poor of water.

The average annual rainfall reaches as high as 300 mm. permitting however the formation of seasonal wadi’s and some irrigation of the cultivated fields.

The rare spontaneous green areas are located along the wadi’s, in any case not above the 2000 meters of height.

settlement landscape water landscaperural landscape site morphology landscape

buildingterraced rural pattern

five meters

fifty meters

ridge

minor drain channel

principal drain channelriverbed

floodplainriparian vegetation

rural areas

rural plot

high way

local street

pathway

A

B

C

A

B

C

Planning and Architectural Competition “THE DREAM OF ABHA”Department of Architecture, University “G. d’Annunzio”, Chieti-Pescara, ItalyTeam_ Ludovico MICARA, Carmen ANDRIANI, Massimo ANGRILLI with_ Fernando CIPRIANI, Cesare CORFONE, Franz LAMI, Ettore LICURSI, Marco MANDUZIO, Daniela MANZOLI, Mario MORRICA, Christian NARDINI, Veronica SALOMONE

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