The reflection of Euro- Mediterranean historical culture on contemporary architecture in Alexandria

During the past thirty years, interest in vernacular and traditional architecture all over the world has grown rapidly and in diverse directions. Architects and all those concerned with the building industry started to realize that buildings at their new current status does not fit properly with their environments in its global term. They realized how most traditional architecture met the needs of the local, worked with the environment and added to the value and culture of their place. Scholars and architects now apply the term "vernacular architecture" to traditional buildings, and “Neo-Vernacular” to concepts that aims to advance recognition and application of vernacular architecture traditions worldwide. Although not all vernacular architecture is climatically responsive, as sometimes social and cultural aspects dominate and govern the needs from climate. However, it is considered more indigenous to a particular place along with its climate. This paper is concerned with the traditional architecture and heritage of Alexandria’s buildings, skyline and facades along the Mediterranean coastal line. This is discussed through an analysis carried out on the buildings of the coastal line of Alexandria, and the timeline influence upon their Architecture

A mixed-methods exploration of non-technical barriers in collaboration for building performance simulation use in architectural decision-making

It is widely proposed that building performance simulation (BPS) software holds massive potential for architects; enabling them to empirically assess the impacts of design decisions based on energy-efficiency and performance. However, migration of BPS into the architectural world has been superseded with barriers. The majority of barriers identified in the literature are of a technical nature; related to limitations in software and difficulties experienced by architects when they attempt to use BPS tools. Instead, many architects rely on the services of specialists in BPS (BPS specialists), and collaborate with them to inform design decision-making. It is proposed in this thesis that alongside technical barriers, there may be additional non-technical barriers which arise when architects and BPS specialists collaborate. The aim of this thesis is therefore to extract these potential non-technical barriers and explore how they may threaten to reduce the potential for BPS to inform design decision-making. To fulfil this aim, a pragmatic mixed-methods approach from the social sciences is devised; consisting of both qualitative and quantitative instruments. The main findings of this thesis have been arrived at by integrating the outcomes of both qualitative and quantitative stages, and consist of some non-technical barriers specific to the England and Wales context. These include architects’ negative attitudes toward BPS, architects perceiving the primary purpose of BPS to be for compliance, trust dynamics and stereotyping between architects and BPS specialists and ineffective communication between the two groups. These findings illustrate that non-technical barriers do exist, and can be extracted using the proposed methods. Novel additions to the body of knowledge made by this contribution include the findings themselves and the methodological approach used to arrive at these findings, highlighting the usefulness of social science research methods for future BPS research

Of collaboration or condemnation? Exploring the promise and pitfalls of architect-consultant collaborations for building performance simulation.

This paper examines collaborative relationships between architects and energy consultants, for the uptake and use of building performance simulation (BPS). BPS is thought to hold massive potential for the AEC industry, by allowing professionals to quantify impacts of architectural design-decisions. However, a number of technical barriers are widely-cited in the literature preventing the uptake of these tools. Instead, many architects collaborate with consultants for BPS uptake. It is hereby proposed that alongside technical barriers, additional non-technical barriers may arise when architects and consultants collaborate as a consequence of worldview differences. To enable exploration of potential barriers, the context of BPS is observed from a social lens focusing on the human dimension of interaction. Qualitative methods from the social sciences are used to extract some barriers; and a quantitative follow-up is performed to ascertain whether extracted barriers are similarly perceived amongst a larger sample of architects and consultants. Barriers identified include: negotiating control over decision-making, differences in problem-solving approaches, cliental roles and regulatory frameworks, professional trust and communication. Identification of these barriers constitutes a starting point to advance BPS research, encouraging a deeper examination of the social contexts in which BPS is used

Teaching BPS to architects: A closer look at the building performance simulation 'consumer' and 'performer' training paradigms

This contribution builds upon a previous study, in which three university-level BPS training paradigms were identified. Using a critical literature review, we focus on two of these; training the ‘consumer’ and ‘performer’ architect, exploring similarities and differences between teaching approaches of these two paradigms. Divergences are found in the location of BPS teaching content within the wider scope of architectural program delivery. The ‘consumer’ paradigm is generally followed in undergraduate architectural education, tends to be taught as an elective module and is almost always linked to a design studio component. The ‘performer’ paradigm is linked to both undergraduate and postgraduate architectural education, is mostly affixed to stand-alone core technical modules and is sometimes attached to the design studio. Similar BPS performance domains are taught across both paradigms, but the rationale underlying BPS tool selection differs. Visualization capabilities and ease-of-learning tend to be the criteria used to justify selection of BPS tools used in articles describing the ‘performer’ paradigm. On the other hand, assignment of BPS tasks to an ‘expert’ under the ‘consumer’ paradigm allows for software with more complex analytical functions to be selected. To conclude, the findings demonstrate how moving beyond descriptions of individualized teaching experimentations in BPS research, toward cross-paradigmatic studies of BPS education, may contribute to the construction of a much-needed foundation to support BPS teaching in the future

Architect–BPS consultant collaborations: Harmony or hardship?

Multi-disciplinary collaboration is considered necessary for solving complex designs, and belief in its merits is unequivocal in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) literature. However, this paper argues that collaboration is a challenging endeavour that entails creating a unified platform for professionals to converge. Challenges are compounded when the collaboration is for building performance assessments, as architects’ and Building Performance Simulation (BPS) consultants’ worldviews are divergent. This paper presents part of a mixed-methods study investigating collaborative relationships between architects and BPS consultants. Questionnaires are designed to re-test non-technical barriers in collaboration, described during preceding interviews. Six salient factors representing barriers impeding fruitful collaborations are extracted, and inter-relationships are explored using inferential statistics. Barriers include perceptions about architects’ attitudes toward BPS, using BPS for compliance, trust and communication between architects and consultants. Finally, this research illustrates how recourse to methodologies from outside the traditional BPS realm may open new research avenues in this field

Performer, consumer or expert? A critical review of BPS training paradigms for building design decision-­making

In response to swift changes in the building industry, and the need to evaluate impacts of design decisions for energy-efficiency and legislation, universities are introducing training initiatives in BPS for building design decision-making. This work aims to identify and discuss prevalent paradigms used to teach BPS. Through a comprehensive and critical literature review, three paradigms are found: training the simulation ‘expert’ and training the architecture student to become either a ‘consumer’ or ‘performer’ of simulations. Examples from the literature are presented to illustrate each paradigm, followed by a discussion of where trainees of each paradigm would be situated in practical project environments. Recognizing these paradigms serves as a foundation to set up future teaching initiatives and research in this area. However, there is a need for members of both architecture and BPS communities to work together towards harmonizing distinguishing features of each paradigm, to fully-exploit the potentials offered by them

A statistical review of a decade of residential energy research in Egypt

To alleviate burdens to the Egyptian national electricity grid, there have been growing research efforts throughout the previous decade to reduce building-associated energy consumption. In the present contribution, a systematic and statistical literature review is undertaken, focusing on studies seeking to improve energy-efficiency in Egyptian residential buildings. Identified articles are analysed by breaking then down into five categories describing variables manipulated, methodology and types of analyses, performance objectives, study locations and residential case studies analysed, with the aim of unravelling key research trends and making pertinent gaps evident. The review indicates significant overlaps in the scope of enquiry; results highlight a simulation-based methodology, scenario analysis and exploration of energy performance, excluding economic and environmental performance objectives are repeatedly undertaken in 75% of articles. Based on these results, operational guidelines are proposed to support future research and broaden the scope of enquiry of Egyptian residential energy research

The social component of building performance simulation: understanding architects

Building performance simulations (BPS) have a significant potential in informing architects’ design decisions. However, architects seldom consider BPS as an integral element of their design processes. This paper reports on a combined qualitative-quantitative methodology aimed at exploring socio-cultural; non-technical barriers discouraging BPS integration; from UK architects’ perspectives. A storyline of phenomena consisting of three levels; architects’ professional identities, attitudes towards BPS and collaboration with BPS specialists, is deduced using a grounded theory-inspired coding procedure. These are validated by way of descriptive statistics and frequencies from a quantitative follow-up. The paper concludes that long-term solutions, addressing differences in professional paradigms, are required rather than rapid response software-level and/or interface improvements