Search results

Passive design strategies contribute to improving indoor comfort conditions and reducing buildings' energy consumption. For several years, courtyards have received wide attention from researchers because of their significant role in reducing energy demand. However, the abundance of multi-story buildings and the courtyards' incompatibility with them, the courtyard is currently limited. Therefore, it is necessary to search for alternatives. This paper aims to bridge the gaps in previous limited studies considering skycourt as a passive alternative on the vertical plane of the facades in contrast to the courtyard.

This research presents an overview and a bibliometric analysis of the evolution of the courtyard to the skycourt via VOSviewer software and the bibliometrix R package.

The research provided various concepts related to skycourt as a promising passive design strategy, which can be suitable for multi-story buildings, starting with its evolution, characteristics, configurations, benefits, and challenges.

The findings can urge designers, researchers and policymakers to incorporate such an important passive alternative.

Researchers, instructors, educational specialists, faculty members, and decision-makers can provide design motivation for skycourt in buildings, in addition to achieving awareness about skycourt and its significant benefits and its role as an important passive design strategy.

The research highlights the possibilities of the skycourt and its role as a passive design element as an extension of the courtyard in addition to identifying design indicators that help designers determine the appropriate designs.

The study examines the residential facades of the Al-Jadida neighborhood, focusing on the use of geometry and proportion in Aleppo's architectural history during the late Ottoman era. The analysis sheds light on the city's past and provides insights into the way residents utilized space and interacted with their surroundings.

The study involves collecting primary and secondary sources, including historical documents, photographs, and drawings. Visual analysis is employed to examine the facades overlooking the courtyard, with a focus on windows, doors, balconies, and other distinctive features that contribute to the overall courtyard design.

The findings reveal that traditional Aleppine architecture is centered around the courtyard and incorporates decorative openings and windows reflecting Islamic principles. Stone decorations are used with unique designs based on geometry and composition, contributing to Aleppo's cultural identity.

Including more samples for studying facades allows for the identification of changes in architectural styles and the influence of different cultural influences on the city's architecture over time. Moreover, conducting further studies is crucial for preserving this important part of Aleppo's history for future generations.

This research analyzes architectural facades in late Ottoman Aleppo, offering insights for future studies and understanding architectural design development. It also informs preservation efforts for historic buildings, enhancing understanding of architectural features and characteristics.

The present study, based on a comparative analysis of several historic houses in Shiraz, presents a new perspective on uncovering the role of the social lives of homeowners in the formation of the spatial configurations of their houses.

Twelve plans were selected and analyzed using space syntax techniques. The spatial characteristics were compared mathematically using integration, intelligibility and axial synergy.

The results of the research showed that spatial configurations reflected the social identity of their homeowners as well as their cultural and private beliefs. The results further highlighted the syntactical differences between different types of one courtyard houses, two courtyard houses and three courtyard houses. While privacy was maintained across all housing layouts, centralized one-courtyard typography had the highest synergy while the three-courtyard typology had the highest intelligibility.

This research advances the use of space syntax approach in the design of contemporary housing by recognizing the socio-cultural values of its occupants.

The courtyard form of the traditional African house responds to people's culture and traditions. Nevertheless, in the era of globalization, the private open space (POS) is fast disappearing in African homes due to neglect and lack of awareness of its value. This study, thus, aims to explore how culture relates to open space design in traditional houses of three major ethnic groups (Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo) in Nigeria. This is with a view to encouraging planners and designers to create open spaces in housing developments according to people's cultural values and needs.

This study is based on qualitative and quantitative research approaches involving a literature review, focus group discussions and a questionnaire survey. The quantitative survey was designed based on the literature review of the concept of culture and the use of space in traditional courtyard houses. Focus group discussions were conducted to identify the specific cultural components that dictated the use of the courtyard as a POS in the Nigerian context. Subsequently, a questionnaire survey was carried out to determine the importance of each cultural component in the outdoor sociospatial design. Through systematic sampling, one of every five traditional houses in the study area was selected to determine where respondents were surveyed.

The results reveal that the cultural components that influenced the design and use of the open space were gender and privacy, family and social relations, religious practice and belief, and status and lifestyle. However, the importance attached to each of the cultural components varied from one culture to another in Nigeria. The findings also showed that the open space is used for a variety of purposes, such as ancestral worship, family gatherings and reunions, small-scale ceremonies, and leisure activities.

This study offers professional planners and designers helpful insights to protect culture in housing development and improve daily living in residential environments.

Based on Amos Rapoport's theoretical framework, this study dismantles the concept of “culture” into different components and examines how they affect outdoor sociospatial design in a developing country. The study also provides researchers with ideas and inspiration to study the culture of POSs in traditional housing.

In response, this study developed a mathematical and computational method, through spatial configurations with justified plan graph (JPG), drawn from Space Syntax to extract essential information of the spatial topology of 13 valuable traditional courtyard houses located in Toon historical city of Iran.

Historical vernacular housing has always been designed to incorporate and reflect the local lifestyle and cultural conditions. “Courtyard” is a fundamental part of traditional Iranian houses. This traditional building type includes a walled boundary and a complex of open, semi-enclosed and enclosed spaces. This study investigates the traditional houses in Toon historical town. Toon is one of the ancient towns in southeast Iran, including old courtyard houses in its heritage context. The spatial influence of the courtyard contributes to the formation of this famous architectural type.

The results show the remarkable impact of this space on dominating the plan of traditional Toon houses configuration compared to other spaces in all cases. Furthermore, spatial accessibility has changed over time, and the Safavid period had a higher level of integration and lower level of accessibility (mean i = 7.03) rather than the Qajar period (mean i = 6.34); also, privacy has decreased progressively.

The knowledge of characteristics of this historical architecture needs to be gathered for the preservation and conservation of the built heritage. Hence, the principle behind traditional Iranian courtyards was investigated to recognize the difference between the spatial influence of the courtyard and other spaces and the changes in the courtyard over time.

This research study aims to explore sociocultural factors such as privacy and gender segregation as they relate to the spatial perception of women's spaces within the vernacular Qatari household, and the activities, habits and practiced culture of its inhabitants.

This analysis utilizes the Space Syntax methodology to examine a sample of vernacular courtyard houses with respect to space connectivity, conducting an analytical exploration of the role of women based on the system of activities.

The findings shed light on the spatial complexity and sensitivity of the Qatari household as it reflects the prevailing sociocultural imperatives in Qatari urbanities, including the country's capital, Doha.

This research study thus reinforces the importance of traditional residential architecture in conserving Qatar's distinctive architectural identity, rooted in its sociocultural attributes.

Sociocultural features such as privacy and gender segregation are among the most prominent factors influencing the spatial form of vernacular courtyard houses in the Arabian Gulf country of Qatar.

It is argued that within a typical vernacular Qatari household, women's spaces are the least connected (most segregated) areas, due mainly to the influence of privacy norms and gender segregation on the spatial configuration of the house.

The purposes of this research were to review, analyze, synthesize and define the principles, indicators and required design elements of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) and the potential role of the design of the courtyards in preventing campus violence; to examine the relationships between built environment design and campus violence inside Al al-Bayt University (AABU), Jordan; and to examine to what extent the design of the open public spaces and courtyards inside AABU meet the design principles of the CPTED.

This research used descriptive-analytical approach, semi-structured interviews, archival records and videos to collect the location-based data of violent events and incidents that occurred on the campus of AABU (the locations of students' fights). Additionally, this research used AABU images; plans, spatial analysis, site visits and direct observations to analyze and assess the courtyards’ design and to examine to what extent the design of courtyards and open public spaces in AABU achieve the CPTED indicators, and the availability and the quality of the required design elements of CPTED and their role in violence prevention.

This research found that environmental-based design plays a major role in reducing crime opportunities and promote positive social behavior. This research found that the indicators to achieve the CPTED principles in all courtyard design inside AABU are very low and all the courtyards’ designs are not complied and conformed to the CPTED principles, and as a result, the design of the courtyards encourages and may facilitate violence in the university campus. It has been found that the availability and the quality of the required CPTED design elements are very low in all courtyards. Therefore, the existing design elements in all courtyards in AABU are not preventing the university violence. The correlation result revealed that there is significant relationship and strong/very strong negative linear association between the numbers of the students' fights and the applying of CPTED principles, indicators and required design elements (r = −0.85).

The data collected from AABU campus only and a larger study is certainly required to underpin these findings. Therefore, future research is needed to replicate and duplicate this research in order to expand the results.

This research has implications for designing/redesigning the open public space and courtyards inside universities. This research recommended that redesigning all courtyards and applying the principles of CPTED are necessary to prevent campus violence. Redesigning includes adding landscaping elements, fountains, water features, pedestrian furniture, portrait, setting areas, new modern sculptures, shaded areas, lighting, memorial places, digital screens and cameras. Moreover, this research recommended that the university should pay more attention to continuous control, repair and maintenance to all courtyards after redesigning them. Finally, this research introduced a design proposal for one of the courtyards to apply the CPTED principles that promote positive behavior and prevent campus violence.

In the last few years in Jordan, some of the public and private Jordanian universities suffered from a newly emerging negative phenomenon, which is violence between students inside the campus. Many researchers and governmental institutions have stressed the urgency to explore the social, cultural, behavioral and environmental strategies that may effectively prevent campus violence. Additionally, little attention has been paid to the role of built environmental design in preventing campus violence. Moreover, no research assesses the applying of the CPTED principles and their indicators in courtyards’ design in Jordanian campuses.

This study aims to identify the optimal configuration to enhance the environmental conditions of a terrace house courtyard space in a hot and humid climate. The use of the courtyard has declined in new housing developments although it is an effective element to bring in light and wind to promote passive ventilation to occupants. To achieve the comfort level, the courtyard needs to be open, but some occupants modify it with enclosures, such as polycarbonate, to increase the useable and shaded area. This affects bringing in daylight but deters the passive ventilation from happening. Thus, this research is important to create a courtyard that brings in daylight and wind as well as shades from the harsh sun of the tropics and to educate the occupants on the role of the courtyard as a passive ventilation system.

The research method employed is a simulation study. A terrace house with a courtyard design in Penang was chosen as a case study of the baseline model. The courtyard configurations of the case study were evaluated, and 4 settings based on the literature review were established for simulation. The effects of the courtyard configurations were tested through daylight and CFD simulations. Daylight and ventilation requirements from Malaysia Standard were used to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of the proposed settings.

The results suggested that the semi-enclosed courtyard feature with a shading device could provide the optimal environmental conditions of the courtyard space in a terrace house in a hot-humid climate. This paper will benefit the architectural community in which it is intended to implement courtyard design in modern terrace houses and will also contribute to the discovery of the most suitable courtyard typology in a hot-humid climate.

The study does not include studies on thermal comfort, energy performance, or use behavior of occupants in this courtyard. The study only focuses on the influence of different courtyard configurations in improving the courtyard space's daylight availability and indoor air movement.

The data from this study reveal that alteration of courtyard design needs to suit comfort level that should not alter the functions of the courtyard as a passive design. The simulation method offers data for microclimatic conditions according to the changes in design. This study attempts to design influence on multiple parameters of shading, daylighting and ventilation to optimize the use of tropical climatic conditions.

The terrace house with courtyard would create a passive design strategy that would naturally ventilate, provide daylight, and will save on energy usage. The courtyard then with its enhanced comfort for the user will be able to function as a useable space to foster family relationships.

The study on courtyard design using the simulation method mostly have been conducted using a single parameter. This study highlights the analysis and process of identifying the optimal configuration for the architectural feature of a courtyard to provide a comfort level for occupants in hot and humid climates using the simulation method using data from two pieces of software.

Rapid changes due to the globalization process, cause in disappearance of traditional values and identity in the new architectural designs, particularly in the historical settlements. Presence of courtyard in the houses of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean countries dates back to nearly six thousand years ago. Privacy is one of the fundamental notions in the spatial organization of the traditional houses in this region and courtyard is the main component that assists achieving privacy in such houses. Kashan as one of the ancient cities of Iran possessing a considerable number of distinctive traditional courtyard houses, is crucial to be interrogated in terms of its traditional architecture to maintain its values and to sustain identity of the city. Space syntax as an effective method to clarify the spatial pattern of buildings and the degree of privacy in the interior spaces is applied in this study to identify privacy concerns on the formation of courtyards in the spatial organization of the traditional houses of Kashan. This paper may contribute in providing an approach for distribution of spaces in the house according to their level of privacy and its relationship in the process of current house layout design

Traditional central courtyards have been advocated for being thermally efficient for hot-climate regions. However, exploring previous literature shows that it is not clear to what extent courtyards are truly thermally comfortable. This study determines the level of thermal comfort in residential courtyards in hot-climate regions, taking Baghdad as a case study.

This study develops a novel Courtyard Thermal Usability Index (CTUI) to quantify the ability of courtyards to provide thermal comfort to occupants. CTUI is the fraction of useable thermally comfortable hours in courtyards of the total occupation hours during a specific period. To operationalise CTUI, the research employs the Envi-met 4.2 simulation tool to determine the annual thermal conditions of 360 courtyards. An adaptive thermal comfort model developed by Al-Hafith in 2020 for Iraq is used to judge simulated thermal conditions and determine CTUI.

CTUI enables determining the level of thermal comfort courtyards offer to occupants by showing the ratio of the thermally comfortable period versus the occupation period. Results show that, in Iraq, annually, courtyards offer up to 38% comfortable hours out of the total potential occupation hours. The rest of the time the courtyard will not be comfortable, mostly due to overheating. When designing courtyards, the most effective geometric property impacting courtyards' thermal conditions is width/height. The most important microclimatic factor impacting occupants' thermal sensation is mean radiant temperature (MRT). This study can be used to inform designing thermally efficient courtyards for hot-climate regions.

This study presents the first assessment of the thermal efficiency of courtyards in hot-climate regions depending on an assessment of their ability to provide thermal comfort to occupants. The study presents a novel index that can be used to quantify the ability of courtyards to provide a thermally comfortable environment to occupants.