​​The 4th Memaryat International Conference MIC 2020

Designing for the Desert

26th - 27th of February 2020 Crossponding to 2th - 3th of Rajab 1441

Effat University, Jeddah, KSA

Designing for the Deserts explores the ways in which politicians, planners, engineers, interior designers and architects develop, exploit, transform, urbanize, and respond to the underground and over ground territories of the worlds’ major deserts both hot and cold.

These climatically challenging regions have often served to search, extract, and transport the deserts’ various natural resources, such as oil and gas, as well as to design and build new cities, buildings, infrastructures, residential complexes, farming systems, solar power plants, climate and science research centers, chemical weapons testing complexes, nuclear weapon research centers and testing sites, and other settlements. How these designs are managed and implemented in relation to the posed current and futuristic challenges? What are their impacts on adjacent populations and environments? To what extent these deserts’ transformations influence the politico-economic assets of the communities and governments in question? How desert built-up relates to climatic changes and extreme dry-Climatic effects?

The aim of this conference is to address these questions and critically analyze the design processes and mechanisms of built environments and infrastructures planned or implemented in one of the worlds’ major deserts located in either Antarctica, Africa, Arctic, Asia, Australia, Middle East, or the Americas.

The Conference Scientific Committee now accepting abstracts for its Fourth Annual Memareyat International Conference. Abstracts should define the subject and summarize the argument to be presented in the proposed paper. The content of that paper should be the product of well-documented original research that is primarily analytical and interpretive, rather than descriptive in nature. Papers cannot have been previously published or presented in public except to a small, local audience. All abstracts will be held in confidence during the review and selection process, and only the Scientific Committee and conference chair will have access to them. The Scientific Committee have the prerogative to recommend changes to the abstract in order to ensure it addresses the session theme, and to suggest editorial revisions to a paper in order to make it satisfy session guidelines.

Of special interest are papers that disclose how particular protagonists, protocols, projects, or built environments obeyed or disobeyed national or transnational directives and laws and exposed the multifaceted effects and legacies of such programs at an international level. Papers that propose original methods and approaches for scrutinizing these designs, including their roots and ramifications in historical, politico-economic, and environmental terms, are highly encouraged.

Please submit an abstract no later than 11:59 p.m. on September 23rd 2019, to one of the conference thematic sessions, the Graduate Student Lightning Talks or the Open Sessions.

MIC 2020 encourages submissions from architectural, landscape, and urban scholars; Graduate students independent scholars; architects; scholars in related fields; and members Scientific Societies and related organizations. Thematic sessions and Graduate Student Lightning Talks are listed below. The thematic sessions have been selected to cover topics across all Desert related design and construction topics and architectural and planning styles. If your research topic is not a good fit for one of the thematic sessions, please submit your abstract to the Open Sessions; two Open Sessions are available for those whose research topic does not match any of the thematic sessions. Please note that those submitting papers for the Graduate Student Lightning Talks must be graduate students at the time the talk is being delivered.

Instructions and deadlines for submitting to thematic sessions and Open Sessions are the same.

Conference Theme

• Integrated Design for Challenging Climatic Conditions
• The Futuristic Desert City
• Urban Morphology and Planning Strategies
• Adaptive Design Solutions
• Landscape Architecture in Desert Context
• Materials Suitability and Natural Resources.
• Structural Systems and Adaptive Techniques

Each speaker is expected to fund his or her own travel and expenses to Jeddah, KSA. MIC 2020 doesn't offer any conference fellowships for speakers of accepted papers.

Conference Chair

Dr. Mervat El-Shafie, Dean of Effat College of Architecture and Design, Effat University