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An International Competition of Architecture, Urban Development and Sustainable Housing, was held in Mexico in 2001. The aim of the contest was to create a vanguard and imaginative urban and architectural design that could accommodate the local regulation, the concept of sustainability and bioclimatic design. The proposed site is located within Guanajuato city’s periphery

From a critic review of the finalist projects we concluded that although they were very innovative in bioclimatic design they maintained the concept of prototype at the unit level and groups of prototypes layout in the plot at the urban level. We decided to take the same theme as an academic exercise for the following reasons:

• The opportunity to design under the same rules but changing the concept of a traditional mass housing complex to a slice of city that transforms itself in time with incremental dwellings.

• The city of Guanajuato is a colonial city very important for its history, cultural activity and architecture. The urban layout adapts to its rugged surface, which is very similar to the one of the given site.

• The contest program had a similar objective to that of the academic program of the last year of architecture in our University.

From the analysis of Guanajuato City thematic and non thematic elements of the urban tissue and with the aid of the Tissue Model method, students made the urban proposals. The unit proposals were designed with Open Building in mind instead of designing the required prototypes.

This article will focus on the tissue model methodology applied, first to formulate the tissue characteristics of downtown Guanajuato, then to develop the urban layout of the new housing complex and finally to develop the agreement documents for the urban design. Some examples of different final urban and support design will be given.

The purpose of the study is to observe the feasibility of missing middle housing’s (MMH) realization under density-based zoning, form-based zoning and a combination of both while simultaneously providing affordable housing, improving quality of life and making efficient use of land.

This study takes a theorist approach and designs three hypothetical cottage court projects that comply with all relevant official local zoning ordinances to showcase design feasibility, followed by an analytical component in the form of a financial model constructed using official local economic and demographic conditions.

MMH, and in particular cottage clusters, can be implemented under rigorous density-based, form-based and hybrid (density-based + form-based) zoning ordinances and provide affordable housing (Atlanta, GA), improve quality of life (Blackpool, UK) and make efficient use of land (Jinan, China). All hypothetical projects are financially feasible under reasonable conditions.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first in the body of knowledge to discuss how the MMH can be integrated into urban density-based zoning rather than converting density-based zoning into form-based so that the MMH can fit. The paper also takes a cross-national perspective and discusses the feasibility of MMH in the resolution of housing issues in the USA, China and the UK. The study also concludes that the issue of housing unaffordability in the UK was caused by high construction cost relative to median income.

This study examines the built environment in the preserved historic settlements of the Najd region of Saudi Arabia, providing insight into shared core concepts and forms that were commonly shared across the settlement's dwellings before the Kingdom's period of modernization.

Space syntax convex mapping and the justified access graphing as the main techniques to examine several internal elements at the building level. The study created elements such as connectivity, access graphs and depth graphs to understand the integration and placement of these elements to overcome surrounding forces. Also, the author combined graphical architectural analysis with space syntax techniques to understand the spatial and physical integration in three-dimensional space. This helped to establish a link between what is two-dimensional (the building layout) with what is three-dimensional (the physical form).

The paper found that the hierarchical order of internal spaces and the order's role in shaping the physical form served to satisfy the social behavior and environmental conditions. As a result, all building elements generated with the guidance of the main culturally rooted in support with internal spaces order. This order of spaces inside the house led the urban spatial hierarchy to connect but not conflict, as the whole process of generating the physical forms is to complement each other and to produce a unified built environment.

This study is limited to Najdi dwelling form and culture, the author believes expanding the number of study samples in the five traditional settlements or expanding the scope of the study to examine other Saudi regions may result in new findings and insights.

The paper offers and discusses two mechanisms on how to enhance the process of designing modern houses in similar cultures or elsewhere in the world. Also, how traditional dwelling elements generated with the guidance of the main, culturally rooted values and beliefs, in support of the internal spatial order.

The purpose of this study is to examine the adequacy of incrementally constructed government assisted self‐help housing in addressing the needs of residents of the Workers’ Housing Estate, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria.

A quantitative method and the survey research approach were used. Data were collected from randomly selected 156 household heads in this housing estate with structured questionnaires and analyzed using descriptive and factor analyses.

About 50 percent of the respondents felt that housing environment in the estate was adequate in meeting their needs. Adequacy of housing unit characteristics was higher than that of housing services, social infrastructure and management of the housing estate.

Incremental housing construction strategy can provide adequate housing for low and middle‐income public sector workers in the developing countries; and this can be enhanced through measures that ensure rapid upgrading of housing units and access to housing services and basic infrastructure by the residents.

The adoption of government assisted incremental construction strategy has great potentials in facilitating access to housing by low‐income urban residents in the developing countries.

A pioneer study on the adequacy of housing provided using the incremental construction strategy in Ogun State Nigeria. Findings may not be generalised, but they have implications for social housing in the developing countries.

This paper aims to study the Zabdah housing project residents’ satisfaction on both dwelling and neighborhood levels. In addition, the determinants of residents’ satisfaction are studied.

A mixed methodology approach was used, merging quantitative and qualitative methods. The questionnaire was developed and filled out through structured interviews. Descriptive statistics and multiple linear regression were used to understand the residents’ satisfaction levels. In addition, the chi-square test of independence was used to determine whether demographics and dwelling type were related to residents’ satisfaction.

It was found that the residents’ satisfaction level with Zabdah housing was moderate on both dwelling and neighborhood levels. On the dwelling level, the tiny dwelling areas were a fundamental problem. On the neighborhood level, good neighborhood services were crucial to the success of this project, while the lack of green spaces negatively affected the quality of life of its residents. In addition, the number of family members and dwelling types were critical determinants of residents’ satisfaction.

The findings can be developed into guidelines to govern the creation of better affordable residential environments. Furthermore, the successful dwelling typologies in this project can be modified to be adopted in the future.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to explore the relationship of demographics and dwelling type with residents’ satisfaction in affordable housing in Jordan.

Over the past three decades, a small community of eighty-four Chilean low-income families has built and improved their home incrementally, without any technical assistance, showing an impressive performance. A six square meters bathroom on a serviced plot of land with individual connection to potable water, sewerage, electricity and access roads, worked as a starting point back in 1974. However particular their rationale may seem, the individual history of their housing process reveals some general regularities in occurrence and duration of self-build activities, as well as size and allocation of the domestic spaces. A small random sample of fifteen households was selected to tell the story and explain the whys, hows, and whens of an ever-evolving housing process. Semi-structured interviews and building surveys were both combined to reconstruct the sequence of states of each housing process, with the awareness of the characteristic imprecision of oral information transfer. Alternative states were explored by constraint programming methods and spatial qualitative reasoning. Considering the hard constraints over the site morphology and services allocation, the results of the exploration stress how extraordinary lucid and intuitive the surveyed families are when making their design decisions. The article exposes a reconstructive case study on spontaneous growth patterns underlying an unassisted, incremental self-build housing dynamics.

Rating tools for the built environment were designed to engage consumers and enhance sustainability and resilience. However, the intended outcomes of these rating systems appear to have limited implementation in the residential new housing market in Australia. The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ motivations and experiences who have purchased houses that are situated in a sustainability-based certified development and will have been required to comply with mandatory dwelling certification.

The paper explores the awareness and perception of sustainability ratings and whether the motivations for purchasing in the sustainably certified development have heightened their awareness of sustainability and the resilience of new housing. This has been investigated through a pilot study of consumers who have purchased land in a certified estate and built a new home, through an online survey.

The findings reveal that the rating systems are at present not having the desired influence as first thought; that is, to inform consumers of the sustainability of a dwelling or property and to instigate trust of the environmental credentials of the property.

This illuminating case study of participants who have purchased a sustainable rated development demonstrates that regardless of their concern for environmental issues, consumers have both low awareness and trust in the ratings. Despite this, consumers do seek value from these credentials to the overall property.

This study aims to illustrate the disconnect in engagement between developers, builders and new home buyers in relation to sustainability certification and implementation.

After more than five years of teaching Open Building to students in the last year of their architectural training we have learned one thing: it is easier to master the Open Building methodologies if we first apply some of its main ideas to extract the urban and architectural rules from the reality and only afterwards, students have an easier time learning and applying the methodology to make new OB design proposals. To achieve this we work either in downtown Mexico City or in other Mexican colonial cities where the historical urban fabric provides an easier reading of the urban and architectural typologies.

In this article I am going to talk about our last year's teaching experience and the results we achieved. There are three main objectives to be met in this last year of architectural training. The main one is to deal with socially relevant problems that involve real communities. The second one is that the teaching resembles the practice of architecture as much as possible. And one that we have added to the curricula is to train students to understand, learn and apply OB ideas in their urban and architectural work.

Architectural competitions have turned into important part of the practice. For that reason we encourage students to enter at least one of the multiple options that occur during the year. This time there was the opportunity to enter a competition aimed for students organized by ARQUINE (a well known international trimester architectural publication). The competition objective was to design studios and housing for art students in an empty lot in historical downtown Mexico City.

To achieve the objectives of the course, as well as to participate in the competition, we divided the course in three parts. In the first part students made an urban diagnosis of the area, a site analysis and a design proposal for the competition. In the second part they studied traditional housing vecindades as well as the families living in that particular area. They applied the support idea to these typologies to get acquainted with the generals of the method. In the third part they studied the methodology thoroughly to be able to design a support building to relocate the studied families. In the end, each student designed a different support building in an empty lot nearby to the studied area.

In our experience, students are very enthusiastic and responsible when working with users and applying OB ideas. Most students from this last generation are now working in housing related agencies. Two of these students work for the Mexican Architectural Association and recently promoted a new competition jointly with the local government Program of Housing Improvement. The competition goal is to design incremental housing in the periphery or in downtown areas, avoiding prototypes. They are strongly supporting the use of OB ideas for the competition and this year's students will participate in it.

This study aims to examine the housing cooperative practices employed in the Palestinian territories in the second half of the twentieth century and across diverse socio-political circumstances. This approach has been implemented to fulfil the housing needs of Palestinian society. Tracing this movement reveals an intensification of the housing cooperative approach between the years 1958 and 2008. However, in the years since, this practice has declined considerably.

This study discusses and analyses the housing cooperative practices adopted by the Palestinian community after 1956. It explores the stages, principles and concerns that characterise this practice, whether it is an approach that continues to meet a share of the demand for housing people in Palestine and how this practice can continue and receive wider support and recognition. The results of this study could aid in providing a diagnostic database, which in turn might provide a needed boost to the housing cooperative movement in the Palestinian territories.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of post-disaster housing reconstruction projects, propose the conceptual living-transforming disaster relief shelter (LTFDR-shelter) approach where temporary shelter is incrementally transformed into a more permanent dwelling by using living technologies and investigate its applicability to provide sustainable post-disaster housing following natural-hazard-induced disasters.

A questionnaire survey with 120 household recipients of three Sri Lankan post-disaster housing projects was employed to explore how the post-disaster housing projects have performed against the occupants' expectations. Furthermore, the new proposed LTFDR-shelter conceptual approach's applicability to address the existing issues found in the study was investigated.

The paper evaluates and identifies the physical and technical, and socio-economic performance issues of post-disaster housing and discusses the applicability of the proposed LTFDR-shelter conceptual approach as an efficient tool to adequately improve the identified factors integrating three phases of relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction employing living technology.

Although the study's scope was limited to the occupant view of the performance of post-disaster housing in Sri Lanka, the findings and conceptual LTFDR-shelter approach could be of particular relevance to other developing countries affected by similar disasters. Further research is recommended to investigate and develop this concept in depth.

This study lays the conceptual foundation for a new theoretical approach in post-disaster housing, which encourages more interdisciplinary collaborations and empirical investigations that potentially enhance post-disaster housing performance and facilitates the application of living technology in the built environment.