Sustainability and the Urban Planning Context: Housing Development in Algeria

This paper describes research into the development of housing in Algeria. It focuses on the history of traditional dwellings and the importance of outdoor space located inside the building: typically in the form of a courtyard. Courtyard dwellings in the city of Constantine are examined in some detail. The rapid urbanisation process taking place in Algeria in recent years together with difficulties in the planning system since colonial times has caused difficulties in responding to housing needs. The concentration of the population in smaller areas of cities has led to the need for more compact yet comfortable dwellings. The paper describes how the situation might be dealt with in the township of Jijel. A number of stakeholders are being consulted and the key results of in-depth interviews with architects are reported. The findings from the review of the existing housing areas and survey are then interpreted to make suggestions for development in the future

Ergonomic Kitchen Design in Malaysian Low-Cost Housing

The kitchen is where family members gather and household chores are primarily done. The purpose of the study is to highlight the issue of the comfort of Malaysian low-cost housing kitchens. It is the space commonly disregarded and has been a cause for many other issues relating to health, safety, and cleanliness. To propose a better design strategy, a basic understanding of the underlying principles and design development is pertinent to extracting the key elements that make up a good kitchen. It will serve as a basis for a revised guideline for plan layout, particularly in Malaysian low-cost housings. Keywords: Ergonomics; Kitchen Design; Low-cost; Minimal Space eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7i20.342

Symbolism knowledge and city perception in Saudi social life

Architecture is the mirror of people and nations with their own traditions, customs, political and economic systems. It is also an historic document narrating the developments and changes that have occurred in the society. Saudi cities have been affected by a cultural revolution created by tremendous social changes that have taken place during the third decade of the 20th century due to the economic boom triggered by the discovery of oil. These changes have brought about the rejection of the Saudi social, architectural and technical heritage. In addition, the adopted modem architecture fails to respond to the symbolic values of today's Saudi society, which should be vigorously supported by the built environment. This research intends to find out how people respond to these changes. It also aims at demonstrating the role of symbolism and the methods people use in order to express and appreciate the aesthetics of their indigenous environment. By doing this it seeks to develop a needs -centred architectural framework which will be offered to architects, planners and decision makers. In order to achieve these aims, the research undertakes a thorough investigation in theories of cultural symbolism and perception. It has also devised an open -ended questionnaire to understand people's attitudes, memories and behaviours towards the built environment. A number of facts and results relevant to the perception of people are observed, analysed and formulated on the basis of the hypothesis that directs this thesis. This hypothesis is supported by reference to a range of literature and theory relevant to this subject area, mediated through the author's twenty years experience in the field. This personal and professional background enables the author to reinforce the discussions that occur in the course of the research by making use of his own awareness of the past and his detailed observations of social life at the present moment. Focusing on qualitative interpretations provides a route towards appreciating the deep motivations that inspired the responses to the answers. A number of steps were taken to interpret the data collected with the aim of deriving the framework sought and to respond to the aims of the research

Cooking with plants in ancient Europe and beyond

Plants have constituted the basis of human subsistence. This volume focuses on plant food ingredients that were consumed by the members of past societies and on the ways these ingredients were transformed into food. The thirty chapters of this book unfold the story of culinary transformation of cereals, pulses as well as of a wide range of wild and cultivated edible plants. Regional syntheses provide insights on plant species choices and changes over time and fragments of recipes locked inside amorphous charred masses. Grinding equipment, cooking installations and cooking pots are used to reveal the ancient cooking steps in order to pull together the pieces of a culinary puzzle of the past. From the big picture of spatiotemporal patterns and changes to the micro-imaging of usewear on grinding tool surfaces, the book attempts for the first time a comprehensive and systematic approach to ancient plant food culinary transformation. Focusing mainly on Europe and the Mediterranean world in prehistory, the book expands to other regions such as South Asia and Latin America and covers a time span from the Palaeolithic to the historic periods. Several of the contributions stem from original research conducted in the context of ERC project PlantCult: Investigating the Plant Food Cultures of Ancient Europe. The book’s exploration into ancient cuisines culminates with an investigation of the significance of ethnoarchaeology towards a better understanding of past foodways as well as of the impact of archaeology in shaping modern culinary and consumer trends. The book will be of interest to archaeologists, food historians, agronomists, botanists as well as the wider public with an interest in ancient cooking

Practices and technological change: The unintended consequences of low energy dwelling design

There is an urgent need to reduce domestic energy consumption, particularly due to climate change. Domestic energy policies and research have been dominated by the assumption that technological provision will linearly save energy. Conventional attempts to move away from this approach have not gone far enough, tending to still assume that technological usage is a linear outcome of an individual’s rational decision-making. This thesis takes a significantly different approach by drawing on social practice theory and focusing on how everyday life is performed. Specifically, a Passivhaus housing development is adopted as a case study in investigating the everyday consequences of advancing dwelling design. Passivhaus is a German energy efficiency building standard, employing very different technologies relative to conventional UK housing. Specific attention is given to how unfamiliar technologies influence domestic practices more generally, as well as appliance-using practices and designing and constructing practices more specifically. This thesis has significant empirical, methodological and theoretical contributions. Empirically, everyday examples illustrate the unintended consequences of new technologies, providing insight on how such technologies could change practices in the future. Methodologically, by treating quantitative consumption-related data (e.g. building monitoring, appliance ownership, construction data) as by-products of performing practices, an innovative mixed methods approach provides unique insights on everyday practices. Theoretically, the potential usefulness of a practices approach is emphasised; in particular, in developing a detailed and contextual understanding of how everyday life is constructed and how it is open to change (often in unexpected ways). This thesis reiterates that research and policy should focus on practices, rather than technological performance or what individuals think about technologies. It concludes by: discussing a re-framing of policy expectations; outlining how energy saving interventions could target domestic practices and its influencing elements; and providing a series of new research ideas that have been generated by this thesis

Socio-material constructs of domestic energy demand: Household and housing practices in Pakistan

Domestic energy demand in the Global South is predicted to grow to nearly three times that of the developed nations by 2040, under rapid urbanisation, economic development and the emergence of a new, high-consuming middle-class. Current energy policy, with its largely technological template and economic focus fails to address the ways of living and patterns of demand that emerge and evolve as a result of the specific socio-material and cultural contexts that underpin how the need for energy arises and evolves. This research adopts a socio-technical perspective to explore various nexuses of practices and spatial arrangements of urban housing that have emerged, persisted and transformed over time, giving rise to unsustainable levels of electricity consumption in middle-class housing in Lahore, Pakistan. It further investigates how household practices fit within the wider system of housing practices and how this can inform low-energy interventions in house design and use. The research combines practice theories from the social sciences with architectural knowledge of spatial agency to explore the interlinked social and material structures that form domestic electricity demand. This is achieved through a mixed-methods approach including semi-structured interviews with homeowners and housing practitioners, cross-cultural comparative analysis, house case-studies, oral history narratives, environmental monitoring, spatiotemporal mapping of household practice-arrangements through time-use diaries as well a detailed review of archival documents relating to building regulations and house plans. The study highlights the significance of local socio-material and cultural context in everyday household practices and resulting electricity demands. It reveals that understanding the longitudinal dynamics of practice-arrangements and their diversity in cross-cultural contexts can help identify and prevent normalisation of unsustainable configurations that gradually become embedded in social structures and practices. It shows how a shift from outdoor to indoor activities, transformation from inward- to outward-oriented design and a spatial dispersion of practices have resulted in increased household electricity consumption. It further highlights the implications of cross-cultural transfer of technology and demand response strategies that are bound by local socio-cultural and material dynamics in the performance, bundling and synchronisation of practices. The study makes the connections between “good” and “bad” housing and household practices visible and identifies various energy transitions needed in housing practices that, through interventions in house design, can lead to less energy intensive household practice-arrangements.Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trus

Comparative pottery technology between the Middle Ages and Modern times (Santarém, Portugal)

Combining historical, archaeological and experimental data, traditional and archaeological ceramics, from the Santarém district, with different chronology and functions have been studied. Our aim is to understand ancient pottery technology and to evaluate whether ceramic production followed similar principles in the Middle Ages (from the Islamic to the Christian domination) and Modern times. Moreover, traditional ceramics, knowing the productive process, have been used as a tool to interpret ancient pottery technology. We considered different utilitarian ceramic groups, namely fire, table and food-liquid container wares. Through the combination of optical microscopy (OM), X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) with physical and mechanical tests, it has been possible to collect valuable information regarding pottery manufacturing, considering the age and the object function. Moreover, it is also considered the effect of raw materials mixing and ceramic paste preparation on ceramics final characteristics. Our results indicate that both during the Middle Ages and in Modern times, technical expertise played, and still play, a fundamental role in the creation of a specific object. In this specific case, behavioural and socio-cultural factor drove ceramists’ decision when selecting between different technological solutions, and every decision or technical choice is/was taken depending on the functional and performance characteristics desired for a specific artefact. This happened during the Middle Ages, and is still happening nowadays for the production of traditional ceramics in the district of Santarém, Portugal