STORY 

Why Asir?

 

"In 2008, I came across Thierry Mauger's book, Impressions of Arabia, and I was absolutely amazed by what I saw through his lens; all these colorful houses, this architecture that represented such a unique culture. Naturally, I showed many of my colegues and friends these photos, but I found that most of them could not even believe these villages existed in Saudi Arabia.

My curiosity grew the more I flipped through the book's pages, and in 2014, I was given the golden opportunity to go looking for these colorful houses of Asir. 

 

Upon my arival, I immediately asked for a tour guide to help locate these old villages and ,for a period of time, I traveled from village to village with nothing but this book as a refrence. I was surprised to learn that the people of the region, let alone the tour guide, were not able to locate these buildings either. Gradually, I began to lose hope in finding them when I met Mr Mohammed. He was a local who recognized a photo instantely saying that he knew the man in the photo.

 

Thrilled by this news, I journeyed to the documented village, impatiently waiting to experience the space myself.

Sadly, what I had seen were the remains of what were once lively homes. The abandoned homes were now ruines, hollow and dry colorless forms that were nothing like the photos I knew. On that very site, this project was born. These villages did not need to be simply preserved, but rather celebrated, revisited, and, most importantly, reused. Reinventing the Vernacular does not mean creating a whole new identity for a place, rather bringing back a culture and connecting it to current to insure its continuation in the future."

                                                                                   - Anna