Heritage buildings are an important part of human achievement and city memory, as well as being a cornerstone of the cultural heritage of societies. The City of Baghdad has a rich legacy of heritage buildings that represent various historical periods, which the city has gone through and reflect a place identity and its local communities. These buildings have suffered from cognitive negligence, their importance and poor maintenance during the past decades, as well as the demolitions of many parts of them and their exposure to various types of deterioration, especially during and after the conflicts and crises that the city of Baghdad has gone through. This research explains the role of social sustainability in reviving the heritage of the existing buildings in the City of Baghdad, in particular after crises times. It also discusses the role of social sustainability, based on activities, in revitalising the heritage of buildings by generating new human activities in and around these buildings; this can improve the communication between the social groups and influence their spatial distribution and interaction around the buildings and thus explore buildings’ identity. The aim of this study is to identify appropriate strategies of social sustainability relied on creative new human activities achieved the revival and restoration local cultural identities of the buildings’ heritage. Methods were included the study case approach, Lynch building in Al-Rashid Street, and applying a set of new creative human activities to meet the revitalization. Findings have concluded a clear development for urban development, based on sustainable social patterns of human activities, that enhance the physical, spatial, and cultural identities of buildings’ heritage.

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The pattern of sovereign buildings has emerged within the course of the history of architecture around the world and through the succession of civilizations since ancient times. The planning and designing foundations of these buildings were mainly affected by the diverse ruling authorities and differed according to the successive systems of government. The main thing that distinguishes most of the designs of this style of building is their sustainability through the materials used in its construction as a means of perpetuation throughout the ages, constantly marking the eternity of its rulers. The lack of knowledge in previous literature in the field of Architecture about the role of materials and technologies in achieving sustainable sovereign buildings in Mesopotamian civilization, constitutes the main research problem. The aim of the present paper is thus defined as arriving at the establishment of a theoretical framework by which are determined the main principles and mechanisms of materials’ choice and techniques utilized in different eras of ancient Iraqi architecture, to finally benefit from the past experiences to attain sustainable sovereign buildings today and in the future. The research results confirm the role of the ruling authority (priests and rulers) in the choice of materials and techniques, as a prominent contribution in achieving sustainability and eternity in sovereign buildings of Mesopotamian civilization.

This paper investigates the implications of buildings’ developments of Imam Hussein Holy Shrine in Karbala, Iraq. It is questioning the space perception from within normal and expert human experience. The investigation spans a decade of reflections since the new shrine development accomplished. The ratio between mass and void have been changed significantly and thus led to alterations in viewing angles, inclusion, visual axis’s, orientation, movement, and human sense of scale. Those developments were encompassing, the addition of a new floor to the existing outer wall building, adding huge steel columns, covering the open-to-sky courtyard of the shrine, and extending the old boundaries of the shrine outwardly 10 meters using arched floors.The purpose is to tackle the current problem of how the shrine’s developments have affected the space perception, hierarchical order of space, and the induced new sensual spatial activities, such as eating, sleeping, and gathering. This paper therefore aims to address the current question of how the shrine’s developments have changed the individual’s experience in perceiving the inner spaces and other building’s components. It was hypothesized that an analysis of the perception of Holy Shrine of Imam Hussain's developments can provide clear answers of the urban changes, which were occurred. The findings showed that the space inclusion has increased while the viewing angles, visual axis’s, continuous movement, and human scale have reduced. Further work will include the influences of the socio-economic and environmental factors in relation to the existing spaces and activities in the analysis and compare the findings with other similar shrine cases, like the Holy Shrine of Imam Al-Abbas.