Sustainable Architecture

Environmental concerns have become an important obsession around the world. Architecture plays an important role on the effects of human built environment to the globe. Passive solar energy helps to alleviate the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) costs and helps to lower the environmental effects. Central and east parts of Iran, called Central Plateau, have hot dry weather. Its traditional architecture propounded some solutions like using thermal inertia of materials to alleviate the severe weather condition of this area. Now, we have more developed industry and different innovations have enhanced buildings materials. In this research, it has been tried to propose a solution for gathering the benefits of traditional and today architecture n hot arid zone of Iran. The proposed system is based on motility of insulation for optimizing the use of thermal inertia and thermal insulation daily and annually. Using smart buildings saves lots of energies and lets the building to respond to its environmental changes like a living creature.

Groundwater management, particularly in arid regions, should be viewed holistically and linked to the sustainable management of the ecosystem. Only through consideration of the interaction between the groundwater and other environmental components can it be possible to elaborate a long-term program for rational groundwater use and protection. Ancient methods of groundwater management, such as the qanats system, provide an excellent demonstration of human ingenuity to cope with water scarcity. To make a qanat, one needs a source of water, which may be a real well, but can also be an underground reservoir (e.g., a cave with a lake) or a water-bearing geological layer, which can be recognized as a damp area in an otherwise arid region. When one has identified this source, a tunnel is cut to the farm or village that needs the water. Shafts are added for three reasons: as air supply, to remove sand and dirt, and to prevent the tunnels from becoming dangerously long. The shafts are not very far apart, and as a result, a qanat seen from the air gives the impression of a long, straight line of holes in the ground - as if the land has been subjected to a bombing run. Typically, the qanat becomes a ditch near its destination; in other words, the water is brought to the surface by leading it out of the slope. In fact, one creates an artificial artesian well and an oasis. There are about 22000 qanats in Iran with 274000 kilometers of underground conduits all built by manual labor. The amount of water of the usable qanats of Iran produce is altogether 750 to 1000 cubic meter per second. Qanats have been an ancient, sustainable system facilitating the harvesting of water for centuries in Iran, and more than 35 additional countries of the world such as India, Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, Spain and even to New world.

Perceiving an environment is the first step linking people to a place. The emergence of this perception which is achieved through a mental and sensory process depends on several factors. In this study, different theories regarding the perception of the environment are investigated as the research objectives. The aim of this study is to measure the individuals’ perception paradigm of traditional housing style in Iran compared to modern housing style. Thus, it compares the perception of citizens of the two housing styles. The traditional style consists of a group of traditional houses from Zand and Qajar era in Shiraz while the modern style consists of modern houses in the same city. Accordingly, after a review of literature, the theoretical framework of the research was developed and a questionnaire and interviews were prepared during a month period. Finally, the quantitative data was analyzed with the help of SPSS Software and the qualitative data was analyzed based on the interviews. The results showed that there is a significant difference among different dimensions of home perception, including cognitive, emotional, interpretive and evaluative perception in both traditional and modern Iranian houses. In this relation, essential items such as stimulating the sense of smell in the yard, injecting the smell of humidity and soil, making physical and emotional bonds with residents show the conceptual differences between the traditional and modern houses in Iran.

A decent home is a basic need for every human. Owning a home has always been a great dream to everyone, it will secure one’s life and give protection to an individual and also the family. However, young people are at greatest risk when it comes to increasing house prices, interest rates with the portions of their monthly income are spending on monthly payment for the housing debt. Most of this generations are just started their working career and hardly earned a good pay. Therefore, the dream to own a decent house is only able to be realized if it is affordable to them. The term affordable simply means, the housing price will not cause excessive financial burden towards their monthly commitment. Malaysia as a developing country remain consistent about providing access to home ownership and several incentives are given to the young starters, however the responses on the incentives are mixed. As the potential house buyers across Malaysia tighten their belt more and more to meet the increasing price of the housing prices, it is about time to relook on the actual cause of the problems before it becomes a madcap to the nation’s economy.

Bhubaneswar before becoming the capital of Orissa in 1948 had been a temple town with series of ancient sandstone temples, heritage ponds and water tanks. Now Bhubaneswar is one of the modern well-planned cities with broad avenues, planned habitation, institutional, commercial and industrial areas. But still it gets the prestige of the temple town due to large number of temples and natural lakes located in the old town area. The old town area has tremendous architectural, historical and cultural values which need to be protected Now-a-days the process of urbanization and socio-cultural change started with increase in population. Here the question is how to conserve the historical area and its natural heritage. Bindusagar is one of the natural heritage and holy lakes in Old Bhubaneswar. The lake is surrounded by many temples and monuments. The lake receives wastewater and sewage from the surrounding buildings, flowers and offerings from the temples, and other wastes from the ghats. The lake is highly degraded and its water is unsuitable for pilgrims and local residents for bathing or any other religious activity. This paper highlights the proposal for conservation and rejuvenation of the Bindusagar Lake located near the famous Lingaraja Temple of Old Bhubaneswar.

This study has examined the effects of place attachment and its impacts on sustainable development. To perform this, the components of place identity including emotional attachment, place attachment and social bonding which totally constitute theoutput of place attachment, by means ofthe standardized questionnaireconsistingof22questions, measure place attachment in threedomains of(cognitive) the place identity, (affective) emotional attachment and (behavioral) place attachment and social bonding. The relationship between the results of independent variable of place attachment on the sustainable development is visiblein terms of descriptive and inferential. Byelicitingthe responses' results of the present situation of the site on theattachment variables'meanit has been shown low attachment, also, ithas been observed that attachment rates in women aremore than men. However, the result of proposal has shown that the mean of attachment variables represents high attachment, also it has been observed that attachmen trates in women aremore than men. The abover esults confirm the relationship between place attachment and sustainable development.

The design of existing cycle rickshaw has hardly changed significantly even since it was introduced in India in early 1940’s from Far East. The gearing and the mechanical advantage of the pedal is very poor. Hence the rickshaw puller has to work hard while climbing even a slight slope. A common sight is of the rickshaw puller getting down and pulling on the foot the rickshaw with the passengers. The conventional drive mechanism of tricycle is provided with one set of sprocket, which gives speed ratio of two between input and output. This speed ratio is fixed for all loading conditions. More effort is required to the puller in starting from the rest or going up. The work done by the various researchers has been studied and improved methodology has been suggested by the authors in future work.

This article aims to make a better understanding of the effective construction techniques in Iranian sustainable and historical water monuments and to present their efficient functions, which utilizes natural resources without the consumption of additional power. This is indeed important as energy saving and sustainability concealed in such constructions are significant issues in contemporary architecture. The present article targets at studying the Iranian artisanship involved in the construction of the structures which utilize the power of water as well as the cultural aspects of a traditional architecture that incorporates an understanding of constructions that date back centuries. Expanding the existing knowledge of these heritage properties and explaining their current condition in order to express the need for the preservation of ancient artisanship as part of a sustainable conservation future are the other prominent concerns of this work. Iran is located in an arid, semi-arid region. Due to the unfavorable distribution of surface water, to full water demands and fluctuation of yearly seasonal streams, Iranian people have tried to provide a better condition for utilization of water as a vital matter. This paper intends to acquaint the readers with some of the famous Iranian historical water monuments.

Although Lagos, Nigeria is classified among the largest cities in the world, there are uncertainties about whether its quest to become a global city can materialize if its growth continues to be inundated by problems of shelter deprivation. The current population estimate of Lagos is over 17.0 million. It is known that 60-70% of this figure are scattered among the 200 officially recognized slum settlements in the city. The implication is that the quality of life of many urban dwellers that constitute the human resource base of the city will be compromised if prompt measures are not taken. This paper hypothesizes that one sure way for Lagos to climb the global urban hierarchy is for it to initiate urban changes in the form of adopting a real estate strategy that focuses on counter-measures against the prevalence of shelter deprivation. The study examines the experiences of cities in countries that share similar historical antecedents with Lagos. Different perspectives of the real estate strategy employed by different countries in their attempt to attract foreign investments are discussed. The paper concludes by emphasizing the dimensions of real estate strategy that could be applicable in the Lagos context.

Today, the existence of natural elements such as sky, mountain, jungles, coastal area, untouched natural zones, water, and deserts have brought many meaningful ideas to the minds of the urban designers and city dwellers. The importance of these elements lies in the fact that they are free from tension, busyness and mental pressure, which are the gifts of civilization to human being. Dez River can be a potential tourism attractor to entertain people and can decrease the stress of living in a city. It, also, can have a beautiful view and boost the quality of life. This study aims to recognize the river significance in urban structure and its role in identifying the sustainable landscape and urban ecological corridor, which surrounds the city. It also attempts to present the principles which should be considered in planning the riverbank wall, by examining this wall near Dez River. By investigating urban structure and river role in forming and developing the future view of the city, the river boundaries, as the urban green belt and respiratory corridor, are determined. Therefore, after presenting some definitions related to the subject of the study, we discussed the sustainable design and its factors for river wall. Also, by introducing such factors, we suggested some approaches to treat Dez River and to achieve an organic and expandable structure in order to build the green corridor on the riverbank and to turn the corridor into a dynamic and live center for the city.