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This study aims to demonstrate how women's involvement in urban planning and design in Gulf cities improves urban space's inclusivity and strengthens identity through cultural heritage revitalisation. It also promotes the participation of women in architecture and city-making by showcasing how shaping urban spaces offers local communities opportunities for social interaction and a more inclusive environment.

The paper critically compares two case studies in the Gulf region—one in the United Arab Emirates and the other in Bahrain—according to four inclusion criteria: context connection, cultural sensitivity, community engagement and choices of amenities. These inclusion criteria are also applied to an experimental project by women architects' students in Saudi Arabia to inspire the future female architects of the Gulf region. From urban to architectural scales, the project offers a glance into the heritage design by women architects.

In light of this critical analysis, this study highlights the sensitivity to issues related to the revitalisation of urban areas by women architects. The case studies identified show the role of the female architect in making architecture and linking cultural heritage with contemporary themes. These projects stitch the past with the present and link cultural identity with aspects related to sustainable architecture. Therefore, valorising women's architectural experience is necessary to contribute to sustainable urban development in the Gulf region and beyond.

The present study addresses the importance of the role of women architects in the Gulf region. The research promotes the full and equal participation of women in the architecture and construction of the city to recognise their achievements by increasing their involvement in the work in a more integrated and balanced way.

Design for adaptability and disassembly (DfAD) is an effective method to reduce construction and demolition waste generation, landfill loads and greenhouse gas generation; preserve natural resources; and increase environmental awareness in the construction industry. However, it is an underexplored strategy due to a lack of information about projects and a set of agreed guidelines to guide buildings deconstruction. This study aims to understand how DfAD can support the sector’s transition toward circularity.

Through an integrative literature review, this study analyzed the current publications and terminologies used, identified the main themes discussed and described the key criteria for integrating deconstruction in the building design stage.

The results showed that the term DfAD encompasses different ecodesign strategies and is concentrated in six major thematic categories (design and construction principles, tools for DfAD, components and connections for DfAD, barriers, drivers and guidelines for DfAD, existing building stock potential and selective deconstruction process). In total, 60 criteria were presented to guide the deconstruction of buildings, emphasizing standardization, modularization and prefabrication of materials and components as fundamental requirements.

The study highlighted the need to expand the knowledge and training of the design team, establish public policies and tax incentives and develop tools, methods, and circular indicators to enable the implementation of deconstruction strategies for buildings.

The efficient application of building information modeling (BIM) methodology in the sustainable building design process, known as green BIM, provides ideal leverage to significantly enhance multidiscipline team collaboration. However, the practical execution of green BIM is characterized by issues such as duplication of work, information silos and poor cross-party coordination. Besides, there are limited studies on the specific components that are critical to driving green BIM collaborative design. This study aims to establish the critical components of green BIM collaborative design to enable the multidiscipline team to effectively use diverse software to collaboratively exchange accurate information, thus ensuring informed decision-making in the sustainable building design process.

Data were obtained by using a questionnaire to survey 360 respondents comprising mainly architects and engineers (civil, mechanical and electrical) in Malaysia. Subsequently, data were analyzed via confirmatory factor analysis. Afterward, a measurement model was established and used to test the 11 hypotheses of this study.

A covariance-based structural equation model of the critical components for successful BIM-based sustainable building design collaboration was established.

The research findings will guide the multidisciplinary team to collaboratively exchange accurate information in green BIM practices.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first attempt in the literature to provide a pragmatic approach for practitioners to combine the established critical components of green BIM to collaboratively exchange heterogeneous sustainability criteria and efficiently design buildings with high sustainability performance, particularly in emerging countries like Malaysia.

This paper aims to explore consumer perceptions of product design awards (PDAs) and their impact on consumer product evaluation and attitude formation about the award-winning product, the award-winning organization and the award-granting organization.

Based on the grounded theory approach, an exploratory qualitative study is conducted, using 16 semi-structured in-depth interviews with Turkish consumers through discussions on real-world examples.

Results show that consumers develop emotional responses to PDAs (e.g. interest, curiosity and confusion), hypothesize reasons for products receiving awards and cite rewards as confirmation of their existing judgments about products. PDAs are perceived as extrinsic cues signaling quality and price, and their impact is increased when consumers feel that the award is based on functional feature superiority. Consumer responses to PDAs are also influenced by the perceived expertise of the award-granting organization and beliefs about the award-granting process. Finally, PDAs can lead to positive brand-perception outcomes, influencing consumer perceptions of the product company as resourceful, competent and prominent.

This study shows that it is critical for companies to inform consumers about the specific features that resulted in a given product receiving a design award, as well as to provide information about the PDA itself.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to explore consumer perceptions of and reactions to PDAs, with significant implications for both the marketing managers of PDA-winning products and award-granting organizations.

The proposed use of unlatched, reverse swing flappy doors is becoming widespread in the design of residential common corridor smoke control systems. This article explores the conceptual arguments for and against the use of these systems.

This article relies on industry experience, with reference to relevant building design practices, standards and research literature, to categorise arguments. These are collated into four common areas of concern relating to compartmentation, reliability, depressurisation and modelling practices. A final comparison is made between different common corridor smoke control system types for these four areas.

The article highlights several concerns around the use of flappy door systems, including the enforced breaches in stair compartmentation, uncertainties around system reliability, the reliance on door closers as a single point of failure, the impact of day-to-day building use on the system performance and the false confidence that modelling assessments can provide in demonstrating adequacy. The article concludes in suggesting that alternative smoke control options be considered in place of flappy door systems.

Discussion on the use of flappy door smoke control systems has been ongoing within the fire engineering community for several years, but there is limited public literature available on the topic. By collating the common arguments relating to these systems into a single article, a better understanding of their benefits and pitfalls has been provided for consideration by building design and construction professionals.

Usage of updated technology is continuously empowering customer relationship management (CRM) to be convenient and user friendly, where customers are kept engaged with knowledge and information. This enables them on decision-making and managing their portfolio, especially in mutual fund investments. To improve toward a positive decision, certain quality related variables needed to be considered. Thus, this study aims to estimate the mediation effect of relationship quality and outcome (RQO) between CRM and investment decision-making in mutual funds (MFD).

The descriptive study adopted the constructs from existing empirical literatures to conceptualize the model with three higher order constructs with 12 dimensions. Survey method is used, and with a structured questionnaire, a total of 323 mutual fund investors were approached using nonprobability criterion sampling technique, of which 262 relevant responses were considered for estimating the structural model. Smart PLS was used to establish the relationship of the constructs.

The result emphasizes a significant direct and indirect relationship indicating that investors are more inclined to MFD through technology-enabled CRM and RQO plays a vital role in explaining the direct relationship between CRM and MFD. The results of the study are in-line with the existing literature.

The study highlights that financial institutions must focus not only on technological diffusion but also needs to ensure quality service by providing knowledge and information during every access of transactions by customers, making them independent and confident during investments.

This study indicates how capacity efficiency, which is a part of service productivity, can be managed without affecting the outcome efficiency by incorporating technology in the place of human interaction during relationship acquiring and retaining process.

Rising damp affects the deterioration and conservation of architectural heritage. Air cavities built next to the base of these buildings on an unsaturated floor can reduce the damage to foundations and walls due to this. These are passive systems, which are usually designed with no objective data to show their functioning and effectiveness. This is why the authors are presenting this study.

This study is presented starting with simple field equipment for representative types for a previous cataloguing of cases in Spain. The physical parameters of the air in this research are air speed and evaporation in the cavities and the base, taking the local climate and the particular formal and construction characteristics of each case study as a reference.

The results of the analysis validate the method and the efficiency of such cavities, whose performance is greater in systems with a variety of features, that is to say, those which work by thermal or wind flow rather than those which only use hygric flow.

This work is novel because there are not in situ experimental works which prove the functioning and effectiveness of these systems.

This study aims to fill the lack of quantitative studies of user preferences in quasi-public spaces to observe the use of quasi-public spaces by questioning the contemporary needs of urban communities and to develop design strategies accordingly.

Within the scope of this study, public space design elements affecting users' preferences in the quasi-public spaces of the Podium Park shopping center in Bursa, Turkey were evaluated. By considering the spatial characteristics of the study area, 4 main and 15 subcriteria were determined and utilized by analytic hierarchy process (AHP). These criteria were evaluated by experts and locals with a participatory approach.

According to the obtained results, “events” (S2), “sun/shade” (C2), “safety” (P3) and “planting” (U4) subcriteria were determined as the vital elements for quasi-public spaces.

Although the concept of quasi-public space has been discussed for nearly 30 years, it has been observed that there are no quantitative studies to determine the criteria of user preferences in these open spaces in the literature. This study is the first quantitative research for user preferences in quasi-public spaces and there is no previous study on this subject and study area in Turkey.

A challenge in implementing Universal Design (UD) is the perceived additional cost, which acts as a barrier to its widespread adoption. The few studies that have examined the cost for UD apply a theoretical research approach, failing to account for the unique design context that influences construction costs. This article presents a research methodology to calculate the UD cost in a realistic, context-dependent manner.

To address this gap, “Research-by-Design” is applied in a case study approach involving twelve cases from three typologies: secondary schools, town halls and small retail shops. Two scenarios are compared to the existing situation: (1) “renovating into a 100% inclusive building” and (2) “building fully inclusive right away”.

Although the methodology is time-consuming, it allows for a fair, realistic and detailed comparison between costs in different scenarios and cases. Findings show how financial implications are strongly related to its scale. Both “renovation” and “new build” scenarios involve costs, but these are considerably lower for the latter. “Circulation” and “Exterior stairs and ramps” are among the most expensive to renovate, but have almost no additional cost in the examined cases for the “new build scenario”.

The research methodology presented in this study is time-consuming, which may limit its feasibility for large-scale cost assessments in diverse contexts.

The research methodology proposed in this study provides valuable insights for architects, designers and stakeholders involved in the implementation of UD. It offers a realistic and context-dependent approach to assess the cost implications of UD, enabling informed decision-making during the design and construction phases.

By revealing the specific cost implications of UD in different building contexts, this study contributes to promoting greater accessibility and inclusion in the built environment.

The applied approach distinguishes this study for its ability to provide rich contextual information on actual cost implications for UD. By considering real cases and their unique design contexts, valuable insights are offered into the true costs of implementing UD in the built environment.

Dam industry projects have significant economic, social and environmental impacts. However, very little has been carried out to improve their lifecycle performance. The purpose of this study is to identify success criteria applicable to different stages of such projects.

This study adopted a quantitative research design where the potential success criteria for dam engineering projects were evaluated. The applicable success criteria were determined for the four phases of project lifecycle by three rounds of Delphi technique with the participation of experts from dams industry in Australia.

The findings of this research suggest that project success is a multidimensional notion and varies over lifecycle of projects. This study on project success criteria shows that certain criteria can be applied to measure success in different phases over lifecycle of Australian dam industry projects.

The results of this research present the first exclusive quantitative assessment of success criteria for dams industry. The success criteria presented in this study enable project practitioners to measure success at various stages of dam industry projects. This can serve as a tool to put more management efforts into achieving success on those criteria.