Proceedings of the 11 th Space Syntax Symposium BAHRAIN - CONTINUITY AND RUPTURE Traditional and Subsidized Housing in Bahrain 25.1 #25 BAHRAIN - CONTINUITY AND RUPTURE Traditional And Subsidized Housing In Bahrain SUSANA SOARES SARAIVA FAUP - Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto pda09012@arq.up.pt MIGUEL SERRA CITTA, Research Centre for Territory and Environment Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto m.serra@ucl.ac.uk GONÇALO FURTADO FAUP - Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto gmfcl@hotmail.com ABSTRACT Societies change and with it the buildings that host them. Space is therefore, a carrier of culture and meaning, and thus, fundamental for our understanding of architecture. Vernacular architecture is said to be a direct refection of the society who build it and its surrounding natural context. However, the Industrial and Technological Revolutions have changed this premise. Man is no longer dependent on its natural context, and the particularities of each society have been softened by the era of continuous exchange of information. Still every society holds norms and values that should infuence the way space is built, but those are more difcult to identify specially in societies that sufered an accelerated socio-economic growth. The paper is part of an ongoing research which aims to understand the social suitability of contemporary subsidized housing in the Kingdom of Bahrain by analysing space as a carrier of social meaning. The paper makes a comparative analysis between the object of study and the traditional Bahraini house. It is argued that the contemporary houses have lost its fundamental characteristics of the traditional Bahraini house which served the norms and values of Bahraini society which persist to this day. KEYWORDS Housing, dwelling, domestic space organisation, traditional housing, subsidized housing, Bahrain, space syntax. 1. INTRODUCTION The countries that constitute the Arabian Peninsula, especially the ones who are part of the GCC (Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf), have been sufering the consequences of the rapid urban growth verifed after the discovery of oil (frst discovered in Bahrain in the 1932).