Applying the vernacular model to high-rise residential development in the Middle East and North Africa

In the age of globalisation and continuous urbanisation, architects have a greater responsibility to design residential buildings with comfortable and sustainable environments. However, sustainable solutions should not concern themselves only with utilising technology, but also with creating synergies amongst community’s social, cultural, historical, and environmental aspects. This research focuses on the implications of this wider definition of sustainability within the hot-arid climates of the Middle-East and North-Africa. Most of the current high-rise residential buildings in these regions do not promote social cohesion as they have been constructed without consideration for local identity and lifestyle. In contrast, vernacular courtyard dwellings and neighbourhoods offer good examples of socially cohesive and healthy environments. Yet, vernacular houses might not be compatible with pressures of modern construction. The question then becomes how to maintain the relationship between the spatial, social and environmental aspects while employing the latest technologies and materials. This paper presents the different qualities of vernacular houses and neighbourhoods in the different regions of the Middle-East and North-Africa. Social and spatial relationships of different cases are assessed, through a typological analysis approach using a developed syntactic-geometric model, to trace the lifestyle and the cultural values of the society. The aim is a parametric exploration of appropriate sustainable solutions that facilitate the synergy of socio-climatic requirements, the well-being qualities of the residents, and the specifics of culture, time and people while designing sustainable high-rise developments

Architecture and the Built Environment:

This publication provides an overview of TU Delft’s most significant research achievements in the field of architecture and the built environment during the years 2010–2012. It is the first presentation of the joint research portfolio of the Faculty of Architecture and OTB Research Institute since their integration into the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. As such the portfolio holds a strong promise for the future. In a time when the economy seems to be finally picking up and in which such societal issues as energy, climate and ageing are more prominent than ever before, there are plenty of fields for us to explore in the next three years

Generative solutions: adaptation and flexibilization in housing as a qualified social response

Housing for all is back on the international agenda. The economic crisis forces researchers and architects to rethink the concept of living and adopt more flexible housing design strategies as an alternative to typologies that impose rules of coexistence and do not reflect the social dynamics of a community. The introduction of rules-based housing design strategies allows the implementation of more dynamic processes. This ongoing research is a reflection on the potential of digital tools to develop spatial and formal parameters based on analysis of flexible housing models. This paper presents the initial phase of the research.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Shape grammar based adaptive building envelopes: Towards a novel climate responsive facade systems for sustainable architectural design in Vietnam.

The concept of a dynamic building enclosure is a relatively novel and unexplored area in sustainable architectural design and engineering and as such, could be considered a new paradigm. These façade systems, kinetic and adaptive in their nature, can provide opportunities for significant reductions in building energy use and CO2 emissions, whilst at the same time having a positive impact on the quality of the indoor environment. Current research in this area reports on a growing increase in the application of new generative design approaches and computational techniques to assist the design of adaptable kinetic systems and to help quantify their relationships between the building envelope and the environment. In this research, a novel application of shape grammar for the design of kinetic façade shading systems has been developed, based upon a generative design approach that controls the creation of complex shape composites, starting from a set of initial shapes and pre-defined rules of their composition. Shape grammars provide an interesting generative design archetype in which a set of shape rules can be recursively applied to create a language of designs, with the rules themselves becoming descriptors of such generated designs. The research is inspired by traditional patterns and ornaments in Vietnam, seen as an important symbol of its cultural heritage, especially in the era of globalisation where many developing countries, including Vietnam, are experiencing substantial modernist transformations in their cities. Those are often perceived as a cause of the loss of both visual and historical connections with indigenous architectural origins and traditions. This research hence investigates how these aspects of spatial culture could be interpreted and used in designing of novel façade shading systems that draw their inspiration from Vietnamese vernacular styles and cultural identity. At the same time, they also have to satisfy modern building performance demands, such as a reduction in energy consumption and enhanced indoor comfort. This led to the exploration of a creative form-finding for different building façade shading configurations, the performance of which was tested via simulation and evaluation of indoor daylight levels and corresponding heating and cooling loads. The developed façade structures are intended to adapt real-time, via responding to both results of an undertaken simulation and data-regulation protocols responsible for sensing and processing building performance data. To this extent, a strategy for BIM integrated sustainable design analysis (SDA) has also been deliberated, as a framework for exploring the integration of building management systems (BMS) into smart building environments (SBEs). Finally, the research reports on the findings of a prototype system development and its testing, allowing continuous evaluation of multiple solutions and presenting an opportunity for further improvement via multi-objective optimisation, which would be very difficult to do, if not impossible, with conventional design methods.N/

Enhancing social-cultural sustainability in tall buildings: a trace from vernacular houses

In the age of globalisation and continuous urbanisation, architects have a greater responsibility to design buildings with comfortable and sustainable environments. However, solutions should not concern themselves only with utilising technology, but also with creating synergies amongst community’s social and historical aspects. This research focuses on the implications of this wider definition of sustainability within the hot-arid climates of the Middle-East and North-Africa. Most of the current tall residential buildings in these regions, in contrast to vernacular courtyard houses, do not promote social cohesion and local identity. Yet, vernacular houses might not be compatible with pressures of modern construction. The question then becomes how to maintain relationships between spatial, social and environmental aspects while employing latest technologies and materials. Relationships in dwellings are assessed, through a typological analysis approach, as a trace of lifestyle and cultural values of the society, to attain parameters that are appropriate for sustainable tall developments

Vernacular neighbourhoods as models for socially-sustainable vertical cities: A computational approach

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has one of the world’s most rapidly expanding urban population. This issue has dramatic impacts on the built environment and increases the need for constructing sustainable vertical buildings. However, most recent developments in the study area have focused on utilising technology and have ignored the potential of incorporating social needs and cultural values. Information gained from a post-occupancy evaluation for contemporary apartment buildings in MENA region show that there are several problems affected the social life of residents. These include lower levels of social support, lower sense of community and familiarity with neighbours, and impacts on children as parents keep them inside apartments due to safety concerns and difficulties of supervision at a distance. Moreover, the excessive use of glazed facades and the standarization of floors destructed the privacy of the family and the identity of each unit. In contrast, vernacular neighbourhoods in the study area represent a successful example of a socially cohesive and healthy environment. For instance, the hierarchical configuration of public spaces and private courtyards allow for a high degree of social interaction between families, and at the same time maintain their privacy. This research aims to benefit from potentials of such horizontal clusters for generating socially-sustainable tall residential buildings that trace the cultural values of the society. Spatial analysis of various traditional neighbourhoods was adopted as a rigorous method for understanding the layout complexity and discovering logical topologies that have social or experiential significance. Using principles of shape grammar, results extracted from the analytical process, associated with specific requirements for vertical buildings, were used to identify sets of parametric rules that combine geometrical properties of spaces with aspects that enhance the social life of residents. Samples of potentially sustainable social solutions, generated by a computational tool, are presented

Future exposure modelling for risk-informed decision making in urban planning

Population increases and related urban expansion are projected to occur in various parts of the world over the coming decades. These future changes to the urban fabric could fundamentally alter the exposure to natural hazards and the associated vulnerability of people and the built environment with which they interact. Thus, modelling, quantifying, and reducing future urban disaster risk require forward-looking insights that capture the dynamic form of cities. This paper specifically focuses on the exposure component of dynamic natural-hazard disaster risk, by considering urban planning as the centre of future exposure characterisation in a given region. We use the information provided by urban plans and propose an integrated data structure for capturing future exposure to hazards. The proposed data structure provides the necessary detailing for both future physical and socio-demographic exposure in disaster risk modelling. More specifically, it enables users to develop a comprehensive multi-level, multi-scale exposure dataset, characterising attributes of land use, buildings, households and individuals. We showcase the proposed data schema using the virtual urban testbed Tomorrowville. In this case study, we also demonstrate how simplified algorithmic procedures and disaggregation methods can be used to populate the required data. This implementation demonstrates how the proposed exposure data structure can effectively support the development of forward-looking urban visioning scenarios to support decision-making for risk-sensitive and pro-poor urban planning and design in tomorrow's cities