Visual Privacy in Residential Architecture of Nablus, Palestine

The concept of privacy is one of the prime states of the individuals and one of the greatest limitations to the public. Among cultures, this social value comprises an essential factor that manipulated diverse facets in life. Privacy considerations commonly influence the entire architectural assembly of an environment. Relatedly, the prevailing global tendency toward modernity has altered the distinctive privacy characteristics of prevalent traditional styles, specifically in residential buildings among conservative societies of the Middle East. Strikingly, even when privacy is desired by occupants of modern-day housing, recent designs neglect from consideration of this desire. In response, building occupants carry out numerous and random modifications to curtail privacy intrusion, so the problems of this study composed. Hence reducing these random attitudes by exploring different procedures for erecting residential buildings that respect to visual privacy considered as a main aim for this study. This study is based on the common method of extracting indicators from the literature review, through gathering data from various resources by directed qualitative content analysis then analyzing various cases according to the extracted categories. The scope of the study focusing on visual privacy in the existing architecture of residential buildings in the old city of Nablus, an area most influenced during the Ottoman era (1517-1922), among analysis ten cases and one region particularly according to the extracted indicators of the physical patterns and parameters. The results of this research lead the designer to improve visual privacy considerations inside the residential environment and recover the urban environment from the recent bizarre modifications to residential buildings, further discussions and research evaluating visual privacy matters in several areas might be depend on this study. Keywords: Privacy, Visual Privacy, Residential Building, Architectural Aspects, Old City of Nablus