Abstract
Traditional markets have its significant cultural, functional, and socio-economic values, which reflect the main pillars for an effective sustainable development. Traditional markets are places which show the community lifestyle, culture and heritage that's why it has a strong rootedness to its local people. By relating space to culture, a relationship between historic and contemporary design decisions can be achieved. Most of the Arabian Cities are undergoing continuous development through different qualities of expression in terms of economy, culture, and global outlook in the old cities 'centres. Nowadays sustainable development has become an essential intervention in the capital cities. However, sustainable solutions should not concern themselves only with utilizing technology, but also with respecting a community's social, cultural, historical, and environmental aspects. Traditional souqs (market places) are centralized as an iconic inherits in the historic old quarter of the city. The research problem arises from that some of the current traditional markets in the Arab region do not promote social cohesion as they have been developed without consideration for local identity and lifestyle. The question then becomes how to maintain the relationship between the spatial, social and environmental aspects in renovating traditional markets. The importance of the research is derived from the need of applying a critical study for traditional markets' architecture with pre-existing cultural values. The aim is to reach appropriate sustainable solutions that facilitate the integration of socio-bioclimatic requirements, qualities of the spaces, and culture identity in developing sustainable traditional markets. This study examines and employs a descriptive qualitative and quantitative research strategies for one of the oldest traditional markets in Riyadh's city old center "Al-zall souq", to explore the impact of change in the old center, through deriving a typological formation analytical framework which asses; morphological language, socio-cultural and bioclimatic aspects. This study comes out with a complete vision tracing the lifestyle and the cultural values of the society, to end up with a group of suggestions and recommendations that helps in the design decisions taken to create an integrated cultural sustainable market.