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Women's Satisfaction of Daylight in Contemporary Jeddah's Flats
No full textFor inhabitants of residential buildings in Saudi Arabia, daylight levels are generally considered to be sufficient (Dahlan and Mohamed 2010). While there are a number of studies that analyse the light conditions as a general parameter for dwellers in cities (Boubekri 2008, Edwards and Torcellini 2002, Gou, Lau, and Qian 2013, Kim and Kim 2010), there seems to be a lack of attention to the specific case of women. In their lifetime, women spend considerable time inside homes. Moreover, the window is an architectural element that embodies a complex combination of religious, cultural, and environmental questions in Saudi Arabia. This study examines women satisfaction with daylight level in their living space in middle class residential flats in Jeddah. Twenty three women between the ages 20-50 who live in contemporary flats in Jeddah were interviewed in semi-structure interviews. This research examines women's real use of daylight in their homes, by questioning the general understanding that daylight is provided at a sufficient level. This paper provides an insight into women's satisfaction with regards to the daylight provided in their daily life by demonstrating qualitative evidence. Results strongly indicates that women are not satisfied with daylight due to many reasons according to window location and glass type. This research seeks to make significant contribution to the gap in knowledge regarding women and daylight in Saudi culture that requires high level of privacy
Architecture within a circular economy: Process mapping a resource-based design-bid-build project delivery system
Full text linkIn this paper, we develop a novel method for integrating system thinking into architectural design by mapping its processes in a standard process modeling language. We structured a decision-support framework using process mapping workflows to incorporate sustainable building materials and resource-based design decisions into the architectural practice. We turned to other disciplines' knowledgebases, such as Business Information Technology (BIT), to develop a workflow for the Design-Bid-Build project delivery method (DBB). Mapping both current and the proposed design processes, including their activities, workflow, and decision nodes, was critical in defining roles, flow of information, and subsequent decisions. In this study, we utilized a qualitative methodology to capture the required knowledge from industry experts in resource-based design and then integrated our findings into a set of process maps to support the materials decisions by the architectural project team. This study establishes a system of information exchange to support the growth of the newly emerging industry of reuse stores and vendors. Through numerous interviews and knowledge capturing sessions with industry experts from the building material reuse industry that acknowledged an absence of a "system of information exchange." It is through this study that an overall system of information exchange will connect the links between the reuse industry and the AEC industry. The primary outcome of this study is a structured process for design with resource reuse. This process will redefine the DBB traditional design process by introducing new procedures, define information exchange and identify key decisions within the proposed processes, define responsibilities and identify key stakeholders. The author conducted an extensive multi-year knowledge capturing process with constructive feedback from the industry experts
Resilience Theory and Praxis: a Critical Framework for Architecture
Full text linkThe growing use of resilience as a goal of architectural practice presents a new challenge in architects' responsibility for health, safety, welfare and poetic expression of human-building interaction. With roots in disaster response, resilience in the building industry emphasizes the preservation and rapid restoration of the physical environment's normal function in the face of shocks and disturbances of limited duration. The focus on maintaining function, and/or rapidly returning to the status quo ante necessarily affords a narrow understanding of architecture and a limited view of the concept of resilience. While useful at certain scales of time and inquiry, this so-called engineering resilience approach is only one among many within the broad discourse across diverse disciplines such as psychology, economics, and ecology. Drawing on the academic and professional literature of resilience outside the discipline, this paper explores the multiple competing frameworks represented; considers their influences and implications for architecture and the built environment at multiple scales; and examines the overlaps with existing discourse on change, architecture and time. The analysis of alternative concepts enables a critical perspective to move beyond the circumscribed, functionalist approach afforded by engineering resilience currently guiding architecture practice, towards a framework of social- ecological resilience that can fully embrace the richness of architecture, and results in a necessary and clear theoretical basis for the resilience of architecture over time in a climate of increasing uncertainty
Research in Architectural Education: Theory and Practice of Visual Training
Full text linkToday, the significance of vision is often considered from multiple points of view including perceptual, cognitive, imaginative, historical, technical, ethical, cultural, and critical perspectives. Visual Studies, Visual Communication and Visual Design are popular courses of study found in many programs of higher education. This paper centers on a course called Visual Training within the domain of architectural education. To illustrate the pedagogical significance of the 78-year old practice, a methodology of Visual Training as it has been conducted at Illinois Institute of Technology is presented. The paper describes the program of exercises used, and through an interpretation of the course outcomes, it reveals the course structure and pedagogical theory. The discussion shows how Visual Training establishes grounds for architectural critique based on visual perception and aesthetic judgment. In looking at this case of Visual Training, the paper revisits some of the fundamental premises of architectural pedagogy – from methods to ideals – and challenges assumptions about the role of vision in education by calling attention to existing biases shaping many of today's programs
Architectural Documentation Through Thick Description
Full text linkArchitectural documentation focuses on deconstructing the built environment in the form of two-dimensional measured drawings. Documentation activities, therefore, seem to be purely technical exercises that afford documenters the ability to collect metric data from architectural surfaces and then to transform field data into graphical representations. However, architectural documentation involves more than just the technical reproduction of a context as it involves an intellectual effort to thickly describe the socio-cultural heritage setting. During the process, documenters conduct an informed survey and bring all the knowledge with them in order to decode the cultural signifiers embedded in the architectural heritage. Discussing measured drawings as an interpretive account of the built environment and surveying practices as a means to acquire heritage information, this article examines architectural documentation through the lens of thick description
Transdisciplinarity: A New Generation of Architects and Mediocritas
Full text linkThe discussion about the legitimacy of architecture being an autonomous discipline or a part of an interrelated system of areas of knowledge has been extensively discussed during the Postmodern period as a tendency of searching for meaning outside of the conventional disciplinary boundaries (Hillier & Leaman 1976; Lefaivre & Tzonis 1984; Hays 1998; Eisenman 2000; Piotrowski & Robinson 2001; Hays & Kogod 2002; Anderson 2002). This article connects the scenario described by Fraser (2005) and Wigley (Stuart 2011) where architecture needs to be considered in an expanded field as consequence of the post-critical period, to the work of a new generation of architects whose interest lies on questions that are peripheral to architecture strictly speaking. The type of architecture that emerges in this scenario is characterised by a proclivity towards other disciplines, including politics, economics and social studies, resulting in a form of design outside of traditional architectural disciplinary boundaries and diluted into a generalised idea. The article presents a series of examples of recent projects and discusses the impact of their approach to architecture, offering a cautionary note. As a conclusion, this paper proposes the notion of mediocritas to establish a right balance between architecture as an autonomous discipline and its disciplinary dislocation with other cultural fields
Sustainable Design and Postindustrial Society: Our Ethical and Aesthetic Crossroads
Full text linkMid-20th century transitions from industrial product society to postindustrial information society have marked profound but now familiar conversions to service economy, knowledge workers, and cybernetic reasoning. Second order, but equally important consequences of this change involve the transformation from predominantly human-machine heroics to human-human collaboration. Collectively, these events have revolutionized the bases of production and value across the developed world. Less appreciated however, are the more subtle shifts of postindustrialism and their ultimate epochal transformations of contemporary life. The short list of these more elusive transitions includes local scale isolation to macro and global scale interaction, mechanistic routine to systemic reasoning, static to dynamic assumptions, short-termism to scenario planning, profit to value motives, hero to team attribution, intuitive to cybernetic decisions, and a move away from rote procedural expertise in favor of reasoned principle, wisdom, and theory. Our historical perspective thus argues for the relevance of postindustrial society in the emergence of a sustainable future, with particular reference to the built environment and to the complex, collaborative, evidence based and cybernetic processes it involves. The difficulty here is that without a vivid and operational understanding of the aesthetic connections and ethical mandates inherent in these more sublime postindustrial events; it is entirely possible that all the best scientific, technical, and political efforts toward sustainability are hampered by old habits of piecemeal procedures, mechanistic approaches, individual expertise, quick profit, and simplistic short-termism. Postindustrial ethics and aesthetics, on the other hand, offer a new and different apparatus by embracing complexity and dynamic interaction. Within that new aesthetic lies a set of principles and sensitivities towards postindustrial and sustainable era ethics. As such, this present argument attempts to form a cohesive framework contextualizing sustainability, societal trends and nascent evolutions within an aspirational agenda. The underlying theory of this framework describes, explains, and predicts the co-evolution of sustainability and postindustrial events. Finally, the aesthetic basis of the theory is functionally aligned with human cognition. Just as humankind did not quit building with masonry at the end of the Stone Age however, the argument presented here does not demonize the progress of the industrial era that has doubled life expectancy in the last hundred years; nor does it belittle the advent of antibiotics, space travel, telecommunications, rapid transit and the like. It is now necessary however to acknowledge that the pioneer era nature-as-antagonist and industrial era of nature-as-resource have given way to an era of nature-as-model-and-host relation
The Opportunistic House for Tehran: A Design Prototype
Full text linkThis article is an advocacy research for Tehran, promoting an implication of architectural design as a tool for citizen empowerment and positive environmental change. In the article, I am offering a fresh look at Tehran's housing problems by speculating an "opportunistic house” typology as a residential style that would serve much more than just shelter. I am making a case for a new house prototype that applies socially-equitable solutions in design. My study finds applications and significance beyond plain housing design and, mainly, onto the design of ad hoc urban public realm spaces. This is in accord with my overarching mission of supporting new way of thinking about, and ultimately offering, welcoming, safe, and energized places for Tehran's citizens. These will additionally have important implications for inhospitable public spaces worldwide. This research is grounded in my prior, multidisciplinary doctoral studies. The article itself is an initial step in my ongoing research design, of helping to build and revitalize a wide range of urban communities by nurturing their relationship to their built and natural environments. The article is a discussion around the following questions. How can housing design inventions empower citizens? In what manner can design offer progressive living place options whose services go beyond shelter needs? Particularly, in what ways can domestic spaces be designed to also embody other-than-living capacities, for example, for new kinds of public spaces? And eventually, what could a prototype of the opportunistic house look like in the context of a city like Tehran? The article is structured to first present a brief survey of how Tehran house forms and functions have developed historically, with more emphasis on their current state. It will then offer examples of opportunistic uses of domestic spaces in Tehran. This notion is communicated through narrative analysis and photographic vignettes from a few Iranian films. Through the selection, I show, for example, how and where informal economies are shaping inside Tehran apartments. Next, the article will identify possibilities and spaces in current houses that are and have the potentials to be used in resourceful ways. Based on the steps indicated, analyzing people needs and artifact interpretations, I will conclude with a design proposal of a new infill apartment house. The final proposal will include theoretical statements about possible design interventions and a visual prototypical elaboration through imageries and conceptual renderings. The resultant prototype becomes one example of possible houses that could serve as catalysts for informative, inspiring, and state- of-the-art practices, a precedent in Tehran for others to build upon
Daylighting, Space, and Architecture: A Literature Review
Full text linkDaylighting dynamism and constant change can characterize buildings and spaces with a living quality that cannot be achieved with any other design element. However, daylighting can create unwanted lighting conditions in the visual field causing discomfort and glare. This may affect the performance of building occupants such as workers or students. Consequently, designing for daylighting needs a good understanding of daylighting. Designers can rely on information from simulation software to re-imagine the space, especially to examine possible unexpected visual discomfort conditions.This paper aims to represent different visual comfort evaluation methods that can help decision-makers make better informed decisions. Different definitions and structures associated with daylight and glare are examined. It also presents a review of the literature of previous research conducted on daylighting, visual comfort analysis and glare studies
The Architect as a Social Designer: The Fun Palace Case
Full text linkThe goal of this paper is to discuss how the architectural profession and its work, through development of physical structures, relate to the idea of social design. Toward this end, we explore a number of issues that emerge from this concept”the social role of the architect, the emerging engagements in social design, and the need for corresponding design ethics. Through an applied sociological approach that focuses on interaction, emphasizing collaborative and transformative work within situated contexts, we conduct a case study on a project known as The Fun Palace. Rather than providing a detailed examination of the Fun Palace or its architect, Cedric Price, this paper uses this case to explore and discuss the potential for architecture in social design. Consequently, the study contributes to the ongoing debate on the social role of the architect, the scope of the architectural profession, and involvement with social design