Arab critical regionalism: recalibrating regionalist theory through the architecture of Rasem Badran

This study reexamines critical regionalism through the architectural work of Rasem Badran and proposes a theoretical recalibration grounded in Arab-Islamic modernity. Although Kenneth Frampton’s formulation emphasizes environmental mediation, tectonic expression, and resistance to placeless universalism, its Eurocentric genealogy constrains its interpretive capacity within Arab-Islamic contexts shaped by spirituality, collective memory, national identity, and state-driven modernization. Using a qualitative and interpretive analysis of three projects—the Imam Turki bin Abdullah Grand Mosque, the King Abdul Aziz Historical Center, and the Al-Bujairi Development—the study argues that regionalism operates through three interdependent dimensions: environmental mediation, cultural-spiritual encoding, and national identity articulation. The findings indicate that environmental strategies within these projects organize ritual movement and narrative continuity, while heritage is reconstructed as a spatial pedagogy rather than preservation. Regional form also functions as cultural reclamation and a mechanism of state representation within modernization agendas. These findings reveal structural limitations in critical regionalist theory and support an expanded framework, termed Arab Critical Regionalism, that integrates climate, metaphysics, collective memory, and sovereignty into an analytical model. The study positions Saudi Arabia as an empirical field for testing this theoretical recalibration, while treating its relevance to the Gulf and Arab-Islamic contexts as a proposition for comparative research.