Search results

The increasing global concerns about the environmental degradation and climate changes oblige architecture students to apply sustainable design approaches in their studio projects. Therefore, renewable energy raises the expectation of providing sustainable solutions for their architectural design proposals. This paper aims to investigate the learning of students in knowledge, awareness and applicability on sustainability during their first three years of the part 1 architecture programme. Surveys were conducted on 500 students from eight architecture schools from the local universities, two architecture schools from the polytechnic colleges and three architectural schools from the overseas universities. These survey results from 335 respondents confirmed that the learning on sustainability through self (51.6%), peer (48.6%) and design studio lecturers (37.0%). These results confirmed also that most respondents did rely on pre-design assessments to develop sustainable design strategies in their final architectural design proposals. These results concluded that the perception of architecture students on learning sustainability is based mainly on other sources. These findings provide knowledge for educationists and practitioners towards the planning of architecture curriculum and the implementation of pedagogical approach in sustainability. This paper determines the most important source of learning on sustainability knowledge for students in the pedagogy at university level.

Three residential colleges located in a university campus at the capital city of Kuala Lumpur and built in different decades were selected for landscape studies with respect to species and position of the trees, as well as the effects of the current landscapes as a shelter in reducing solar radiation on buildings, as a pre-assessment for the Low Carbon Cities Framework (LCCF) and assessment system. These landscape designs were carefully studied through on-site observation. The name and location of the matured plants were redrawn and visualised with standard normal photographs. The studies revealed that the old residential college landscape is dominated by tropical forest trees which are able to provide a significant shade to the buildings and offered a potential to achieve sustainable development due to a higher rate of carbon sequestration. While, palm and hybrid fruit plants were most extensively cultivated in the landscape of new residential colleges due to low maintenance and being fast growing.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated management structure for the identification and evaluation of Palestine’s heritage, although the unending Israeli occupation poses a huge, multi-faceted constraint. Necessarily, the approach chosen considers aptly the local culture, values, dynamics and context, assimilating the significance of a broader range of different, diverse historical and cultural resources with a variety of meanings, tangible and otherwise, across various sections of the population.

A multi-technique strategy emphasized the combination of between-technique triangulation in the implementation to enhance and improve substantially the related internal legitimacy of the investigation. A thorough exploration was executed via field investigation survey, meetings with the local communities and conservation questionnaires. Equally useful was the second method employed to gain valuable information on the transformation of conservation activities in highly diverse geological and cultural cases in the USA, France and Egypt.

This research consequently produced a much needed, important approach for the recognition, assessment and administration of Palestine’s ancient cultural assets with respect to native culture, standards, non-static aspects and boundaries.

The study assists the authorities and decision makers in developing mechanisms for the management of the cultural heritage that would stop the expansion of Israeli settlements as a form of non-violent resistance.

The purpose of this paper is to present the efficiency of electricity use and potential of electricity reduction at 12 residential colleges located at University of Malaya Campus, Kuala Lumpur.

The work presented applies an energy audit when energy consumption data were collected and analysed for a five‐year period. The total savings of electricity used at residential colleges were identified through the difference between average total energy use in a year (kWh) and minimum electricity usage.

The study finds that residential colleges with special features of building layout and arrangement performed better with regard to electricity consumption due to the prior group's superior utilisation of day lighting and natural ventilation. The floor area of the rooms, volume, density, enclosure and facade design, including window design, window area, and window‐to‐wall ratio also influenced the total electricity usage of the residential college buildings. Also, through adaptation of the corridor area to include more natural ventilation and daylight, approximately 40 to 90 percent of average electricity usage could be conserved in a year.

The methodology is limited to energy audit for a five‐year period of metered data and walk‐through analysis.

The findings raised some issues related to thermal comfort of the residents.

The study can be used as baseline data for a tropical region particularly on current electricity usage and potential of energy conservation in residential building.