Abstract Traditional architectural typologies could play a crucial role in the environmental architectural contemporary framework, due to many attempts developed in last decades to adopt passive house model and bioclimatic criteria in the Mediterranean areas. According to climate responsive approach, the interactive and adaptive relationship between building, site, and climate consider a basic rule to reduce the environmental impact and improving energy efficiency in buildings. In recent decades this concept has extended to the preservation of the cultural identity of the places. High level of adaptive, sustainable and functional performances could be deduced from the traditional residential buildings as the case of Aleppo proves. The traditional Arab house in Aleppo is based on series of adaptive and sustainable-oriented principles derived from the integration of active and interactive design approaches. The old city of Aleppo (included in the UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites) is considered one of the largest historical cities in the world, in terms of its population number (110,000 people before the war). The damage to cultural and historical heritage by the war asserts the peculiarity of the city in the Eastern Mediterranean area. This paper presents the study that the authors are carrying out on Aleppo, considering the bioclimatic approach as a key element to reorient the future construction process of the Syrian city to achieve the objectives of global sustainability and identify design criteria's for the development of the residential buildings. The study also aims to analyse the mutations which appeared through evolution process of residential buildings and identify the invariant elements and the main trajectories of modification established in the past, confirming their compatibility with the future development of Aleppo
