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This paper aims to investigate the potential role of the Emergency Department (ED) layout in enhancing its functionality. It applies a performance-based building design (PBBD) approach to evaluate emergency department functionality and efficiency as the most important criterion behind the success of the hospital service.

A quantitative approach based on space syntax theory was adopted through four syntactic maps (isovist, axial, convex, and visibility graph analysis VGA), to depict three case studies in Erbil city hospitals by analyzing three different layout typologies of ED such as Podular, Ballroom and Linear through measuring wayfinding, accessibility, privacy, visibility, time spend-length of stay and corridor circulation as layout factors.

This paper provides empirical insights on how the ED layout typology factors significantly affect producing functionally efficient EDs, whereas the Ballroom ED layout typology is the most effective compared to others. Given the importance of ED in enhancing a healthy environment for patients and staff, study findings are valuable resource for health designers, who play a critical role in ensuring patients enjoy a healthy and safe environment.

This paper has attempted to identify the appropriate layout of ED for effective functional performance in hospitals. A syntactical analysis between three different ED layout typologies based on the layout variables has been analysed using the PBBD approach. There has been no attempt carried out so far to analyse the functional performance of the PBBD approach in different ED layouts using layout variables.

The purpose of this paper is to define the identity, city identity and architectural identity; to review, analyze and synthesize different pieces from literature to explore and define the factors that shape the city identity; to define the strategies of hybridization process that can be used to re-locate (re-define) the city identity; to examine the most effective factors that shape the identity of Amman city from various perspectives, to examine the relationships/interrelationships between all the factors that shape any city identity from the designers’ perspective, finally, to apply the strategies of hybridization process to re-locate (re-define) Amman’s city identity.

This research used two research methods to collect data as follows: literature review, content analysis and face-face questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to examine the most effective factors that shape the Amman’s identity from different perspectives. The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (Pearson r) was computed to assess the relationships between all factors that shape the identity of any city from the perspective of Jordanian designers and experts.

This research concluded that the factors that shape the city identity are cultural factors (socio-cultural, historical, economical and globalization factors), environmental factors (geographic, climate and building materials factors) and urban and architectural factors (spatial design organization, architectural style, open spaces and parks, urban structure factors). Additionally, the six urban development factors that responsible for the hybridization process in a city are new architectural typology and new special configuration, urban edges and hybrid textures, public hybridization open spaces, roads highway-scapes, urban redevelopment through super sites by star architects and downtown urban developments. This research found that there are different perspectives about the definition and factors that shape the identity of Amman’s city because of differences in cultures, experiences, knowledge, education level and personal preferences. The city identity is not a constant concept. It is changed according to time, place, people, culture, global trends, economic status and experience. Moreover, the correlation results revealed that the relationships/interrelationships between all the factors that shape the identity of any city have strong/very strong positive linear associations and significant relationships (r > 0.89).

Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) should provide a vision to redefine the identity of Amman city and control over the development pressure, built form and image of the city. This vision should be based on research, analysis and adoption of the most effective road map. GAM and all stakeholders should establish and enforce using specific architectural styles, urban design guidelines, building codes, policy tools and land use regulations to re-define the city identity. GAM should review, assess, approve and supervise all development projects through all design and construction phases especially in sensitive areas. GAM should focus on building capacity, empower its architects and planners, and re-organize (re-structure) their units and administrations especially planning and licensing departments to improve the city image and guide development. This research recommended that architects should design new, diverse and innovative architectural concepts, typologies and spatial configurations. Rapid development and new edges should be planned, designed and managed from the parts to the whole. The heterogeneous landscape and everyday activities will improve the vitality of urban and open public spaces and form of public culture. Architects and star architects ought not to make a clear and sharp separation between old and new development, architectural styles and typologies. Architects and urban designers ought to design hybrid physical urban environments, urban morphology, urban multi-functional activities, mix-use buildings, open spaces for social life, street patterns and furniture, squares, architectural style and typologies, spatial connectivity, green spaces and landscape entities. The designers and planners should consider how to create a city for living, working and recreation.

This research defined the identity, city identity, architectural identity and the factors that may shape the city identities. This research proposed and used the hybridization process as a tool to re-locate (re-define) the identity of Amman city and any city to be more obvious. Additionally, this research examined the relationships/interrelationships between the factors that shape the city identity.

The world has recently faced the outbreak of an existential threat. Since December 2019, many aspects of life have changed owing to a devastating pandemic, COVID-19. The second wave started spreading in different parts of the globe. This article focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on Cairo city, regarding three upper-middle-class districts as a case study. Based on a literature review, a theoretical framework is proposed to analyse how residents changed their living, work, and leisure time habits during the outbreak of the pandemic.

A retrospective survey was conducted among the residents of three districts to investigate the new living model of adaptive, spontaneous urban and architecture design tactics that transfer people’s actual life, work, and leisure arrangements into future planning considerations.

The results reveal relevant observations about the adaptation of the existing environments of home, work, and leisure activities. From these results, different considerations and new norms emerge for housing typologies in post-pandemic Cairo.

The conclusions of this study introduced the new term “the fifth place” as a space-time place that could serve as a motivation for urban designers and architects to design space typologies considering the emerging circumstances.

Conventional approaches of evaluating spatial layout configurations typically involved universal understandings of aspects like connectivity, proximity and visibility, while possibly discarding both partially true solutions and ranges of parameters affecting detailed spatial relations. With the growing need to address spatial uncertainty and ambiguity, the incorporation of methods that embrace soft qualities in design is becoming increasingly significant in spatial layout planning.

The authors introduce a fuzzy-based approach for the automated assessment of architectural spatial layout configurations while addressing ambiguity in layout design. The authors evaluate soft interdependent design qualities like connectedness, enclosure and spaciousness to satisfy multiple mutually inclusive criteria and account for all logical solutions without discarding likely or less likely solutions. The authors analyze spatial entities, parameters and relations and identify rulesets for logical configurations using linguistic variables, fuzzy sets, membership functions and descriptive rule blocks. As a case study, the authors use grasshopper and fuzzyTECH to represent four pilot layout alternates with varying attributes and a case study focusing on one specific spatial criterion.

Multiple complex and nuanced spatial relations were inferred by evaluating spatial outputs and their inherent discrepancies and correlations, thus confirming the assumption that fuzzy-based systems could potentially satisfy multiple mutually inclusive criteria and account for exhaustive logical solutions without discarding preferable, likely or less likely solutions.

Most precedent approaches focus on spatial layout design from an occupancy-centered perspective, where occupancy patterns and possibilities are identified in loosely defined spaces or behavioral usage patterns. The added value in this paper involves including a wide array of spatial inputs to describe soft spatial qualities using nuanced rule-based descriptors.

Formal architecture curriculum necessitates students to observe their architectural experience and environment, which cannot be comprehended entirely in a classroom alone. However, complications in handling site visits and the Covid-19 pandemic can affect their overall learning experience. This study seeks to uncover (1) how a learning tool can be designed to actively enrich novice designers' personal spatial understanding and (2) how will the experiential learning (EL) with immersive learning technology (ILT) replace the actual concrete experience (CE) in enriching the novice designers' personal spatial experience during the architecture design process.

The current research focuses on novice designers (first-year architecture students) who seem to lack personal spatial experience. Findings from a personal spatial experience survey (PSES) conducted in the earlier stage of the research established that each learner had had a different level of spatial experience, which affected their approach in the design process. A learning tool called Architectural Spatial Experience Simulation (ASES) was designed, developed, implemented and evaluated with an experiential learning model (ELM) framework.

The findings suggest that the use of ASES in the ELM significantly increased the learners' spatial experience. However, the simulation and framework demonstrated a different effect on the participants' spatial experience, particularly on learners with minimal spatial experience.

This study benefits the architecture learning process by providing a tool and a framework to remedy the emerging issue concerning novice designers. The finding contributes to the body of knowledge by expanding the application of EL theory in architecture education.

This article explores the little understood practice of school interior design and the manner in which school interiors give form to ideas about what the work of children and teachers could and should look like. Its focus is a perceived link between the concepts of school work made material in the design of new twenty‐first century learning environments and those expressed in the design of Modernist progressive schools such as Richard Neutra’s Corona Ave, Elementary School, California. The article’s impetus comes from current interest in the inter‐relationship between the design of physical learning environments and pedagogy reform as governments in Australia and internationally, work to transform teaching and learning practices through innovative school building and refurbishment projects. Government campaigns, for example the UK’s Schools for the Future Program and Australia’s Victorian Schools Plan, use a promotional rhetoric that calls for the final dismantling of the cellular classroom with its industrial model of work so that ‘different pedagogical approaches and the different ways that children learn [can] be represented in the design of new learning environments’, in buildings and interiors designed to support contemporary constructivist‐inspired pedagogies.

The proposed definitional framework can be used to define housing typologies of cities in developing countries. It aims to define housing typologies in the capital city of Albania, Tirana, using the proposed hierarchical framework within the dynamics of four political periods: Ottoman, establishment, socialist and postsocialist.

This study proposes a new definitional approach for the housing typologies through a hierarchical framework that defines the typologies based on their political period and legality statuses departing from the case of Tirana, which is featured by a heterogeneous context. Such context is characterized by uncontrollable urban development, making typology definition problematic. Furthermore, beyond the form, spatial and functional features, it presents their exterior distinctiveness as an innovative element. The methodology used in the study includes archival research, image documentation, spatial, functional and exterior distinctiveness analysis of housing typologies and exploration of housing form features in different political periods.

The study identifies urban formal housing typologies in Tirana detached houses, apartments, mass housing, social housing, gated communities, informal detached houses and housing with in/formal additions.

This definitional approach can be used to define housing typologies for cities featured by heterogeneous urban context.

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.

This study introduces diagrammatic morphology as a novel method for analysing the synergistic interactions within school mapping. It seeks to reshape the evaluation of school mapping typologies, focusing on the interconnectedness of learning activities, social interactions, and spatial configurations. Aims: (1) To develop the morphological evaluation procedures for school mapping. (2) To evaluate the Iranian Middle Schools' Interior Architecture (IMSIA) using the diagrammatic morphological method.

This qualitative study has been conducted in two steps: A review of the morphological method for school mapping evaluation. A case study analysis of fifty-five IMSIA samples.

The spatial typology of IMSIA were categorized into four distinct models. These models included ten distinct pattern categories within twenty-one different types. The case study evaluation identified three levels of synergistic complexity within the school mapping: primary, intermediate, and advanced. The advanced level displayed the strongest connection to pedagogies among the analysed models.

This research innovatively evaluates the synergistic context of schools based on the assemblage theory through an occupational analysis of the Iranian middle schools' interior architecture mapping diagrammatic morphological method.