A Continuity of the Past in Contemporary Architecture: Investigating a “Cultural Continuity”

— Analysis in this article has at its stake the continuity of the traditions into the present. Analysis in this article in doing so investigates the concept of a “cultural continuity” (or, a “continuity of memory”) that evokes a place’s “unique identity” in the architecture design of the present, however, the search for identity in architecture design does not lead to a design that is merely marked by either “falsifying history” or “being identical” with the traditions. Analysis in this article chooses the Masdar City (UAE) as a case study and suggests that a contemporary architecture inspires its conceptual design from the architecture of the past striving for a place’s identity by neither literally copying the traditional motifs nor importing the universal models inherited in modernist/postmodernist architecture.