Sustainable Architecture

Urban spaces and the facades and physical elements of the city are the best things to lead us to a direct understanding of the city and whatever happens in it. Citizens interact with such spaces and find common points with other citizens. They experience the common events and a joint image is formed in their minds. The results of these common experiences and images can be called the identity of the city in the minds of its residents. The urban open spaces (i.e. the urban places for shopping, recreational activities, visiting, and gathering without any barrier at any time) are very effective on the formation of the collective identity between the citizens and on the solidarity of the urban identity. In case of Iran, a clear representation of such spaces can be found in the traditional bazaars. Iranian bazaars are the public attractiveness of the cities that call the people to come and spend their time. The Iranian old cities have been mainly commercial and merchandised cities and thus the bazaar used to be the backbone of the cities. The role of bazaar will be understood more clearly when we see that the main elements of the city, including the squares, mosques, schools, public houses, etc. were built beside the bazaars. The main subject of this research (i.e. traditional bazaar of Shiraz City) is located in Shiraz city, Fars Province of Iran. The main reason for choosing Shiraz is the fact that it is hold as the heart of Iran, i.e., between North, South, East, and West. Thus the potentials of the city can be conducted in a right commercial way.

The study focused on the need to evolve design criteria for designing and optimal utilization of recreational open spaces in relation to the appropriate percentage of indoor to outdoor facilities. The amount of time available for leisure, available facilities, accessibility to recreational areas, architectural planning, marketing and publicity, contribute significantly to people’s participation and utilization quality in open space recreation. It is therefore necessary to collect and analyze primary social data to form the basis of architectural planning and design of recreational facilities for people in Owerri. The paper explored the constituents of existing recreational open spaces in the study area and using a well structured questionnaire, social data of preference the indoor and outdoor facilities data were derived to constitute the guideline to issue recommendations for the improvement and revitalization of the free and recreational spaces that will enhance quality of utilization.

In building production management, the goal is to achieve project delivery within the contract cost, time and to ensure that specified scope and quality is met without compromising the health and safety of the operatives. Effective project delivery refers to realizing the building project within the scheduled time at the scheduled cost which equally meets the client’s need. This is achievable adopting some cost reduction parameters. According to Arora and Bindra (2008), building materials account for 50 to 80 percent of the total value of construction; hence the ability to reduce wastage and improve productivity will have major cost and time benefits. For a project to be successfully delivered, Lock (2002), states that such project would seek to foresee or predict as many of the dangers and problems as possible and to plan, organize and control activities so that the project is completed as successfully as possible despite all the risks. This process starts before any resources are committed, and will continue until all work is finished. The aim is for the final result to satisfy the project sponsor or purchaser within the promised timescale and without using more money and other resources than those originally set aside or budgeted. It was observed that diligent building materials management; adoption of inventory models as cost reduction parameters in public building delivery significantly reduce time, waste and cost. In addition development of appropriate framework for Economic Order Quantity model which enables the ordering of the critical building materials as and when needed without overstocking and tying up capital assist to minimize total construction cost so that project will be realized on schedule in accordance to specified quality hence, eliminating the incidence of failed construction projects.

According to the importance of Iran's position in the Middle East region and the constant presence of outside threats and also due to the geographical dimension and Establishment of earthquake faults, Defense and devise have a vital role in many aspects of normal and Procrustean.it’s necessary to adopt various measures in order to protect vital installations and sites. The purpose of this study was to examine the principles and strategies of passive defense with an open approach to the points of entry to the cities. The analytical and descriptive methods are used in this study. Background of this issue in Iran, Successful experiences and ideas of experts in the field are reviewed after that the strategies of Passive defense in architecture design are studied, finally principles of Passive defense in redesign the points of entry to the cities are presented as a result. It’s expected that the urban systems are maintained and the risk of disruption of transport system is reduced in crisis situations by usage of these principles.

This paper highlights the role of new Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) in designing Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). The proposed EA has been used for two purposes. One is generalization of architecture. In this, the optimal adaptive architecture is achieved by using evolutionary crossover and mutation. The adaptive strategy merges or adds hidden neurons based on the learning ability of hidden neurons or the training progress of ANNs. The mathematical frame work is also discussed. The other is the Time Complexity of ANN to reach the global minima using two selection processes. The proposed EA has been tested on a number of benchmark problems in machine learning and ANNs, including breast cancer, diabetes, heart problems and for time complexity N-Bit Parity is used. The experimental results show that proposed EA can design compact ANN architectures with good generalization ability, compared to other algorithms with good time complexity.

Despite the many benefits of modern urban life, it has some disadvantages as well. One of the most important disadvantages is that modern urban life affects the mental and physical health problems due to exposure to urbanize problems such as air and noise pollutions, behavioral disorders including lawbreaking and law violation. Therefore, it seems crucial to allocate a special time to leisure activities in the natural or quasi natural environment to reduce the impacts of urban life.Parks can be one of the most suitable places for spending leisure time. Most parks, particularly urban parks are rarely designed and constructed based on scientific criteria. Thus, redesigning of urban parks based on cultural, educational and environmental criteria should be taken into consideration. Urban parks are one of the most important places that have the highest crime rates due to their inappropriate design. Urban parks are often designed in low quality due to the lack of implementation of standard rules such as massive vegetative areas, low lighting, dark corners and informal investigation. This makes the park less effective and its quantity, quality and sustainability can be affected. Therefore, the only solution for sustainable use of parks, especially the urban parks, which are not designed based on scientific criteria, is to redesign them. The ultimate aim of the present study is to resolve the problems relevant to lack of information discussed above by designing the park with creating priority maps needed for redesigning a park and by a comparative study of the correspondence between the criteria used in designing the Azadi Park in Shiraz and the actual ecological and socio-cultural criteria that are used in designing by a descriptive approach and data analysis using ANP method

This paper aims to throw a light on the present a scenario of sustainability in India with the help of two categories of cases and data i.e. unsustainable and sustainable pertaining to the scenario of sustainability in India. These cases and data encompass individuals, groups, communities and institutions, corporate and the administrative government in India which substantiate our argument in this regard. The rationale of the methodology of studying cases is to give a bigger picture of sustainability in India with the help of these examples and to approach the question in hand both with the help of both subjective observations and objective data from the existing bodies of knowledge. Note: This work is supported by UGC under NET-JRF.

Green roofs bring ecosystem benefits in urban context, including building energy performance, improved air quality, air pollution mitigation, Urban Heat Island (UHI) mitigation, improved runoff water management, increased roof lifetime span, agricultural productivity, improved physical and mental public health, increased aesthetic values of urban areas, noise pollution mitigation, improved photo-voltaic panels efficiency and improved urban wildlife habitat. This paper reviewed, analyzed and discussed the previous studies for these benefits. The results from these studies acknowledged the capability of green roofs as a key element in order to improve the quality of urban areas. Therefore, this article recommends the implementation of green roofs in urban areas as a key factor in urban sustainability and development. Future research into green roofs technology is recommended in order to evaluate the efficiency of green roofs compared to other approaches aiming to improve the sustainability of urban areas.

Discovering the methods of constructing the domes, identification of different types of dome, studying the function of the structure, the strategies of drawing them, administrative works, as well as their related issues have been of special interest and concern of Iranian architects. Many valuable books, articles, and reports have been written in this field by Iranian architects. Thus, various types of dome such as rok, nar, and double-shelled have been introduced to the world and their functions have been investigated. In this architecture, ourchin dome, which is of typical characteristics of the tombs in southern part of Iran, has been neglected. Little information about this type of dome is available in the history of Iranian architecture. And this little information is limited to some reports and pictures from foreign tourists and unknown writers, including no more than a few names and dates of constructing of such structures. Therefore, the origin and the reason for the development of such domes as well as their role are still mysterious. The methodology of the current study is descriptive and analytical. In different parts of the present study, comparative, retrospective, and fieldwork studies have been used, whenever needed. In the current research, the root of the word, ourchin dome, and its meaning are pointed out. Also, the origin of Iranian architecture, which dates back to Seljuqid period, is introduced. Then, the geometric relationships of its sides are examined and different varieties of this dome [star and polygonal] are drawn. Studying the typology of the examples of this dome in Iran and Iraq revealed some remarkable points about the geometric, height, and shape of the dome, in addition to the number of its stories. Some factors, like the function of the crown, method of its construction, cover of the dome, and the system of the distribution of the load are clarified. Finally, by investigating the influential cultural and historical factors, we concluded that that the main reason for the development of the general structure of this type of dome was symbolic, not simply religious. This dome by its own or in combination with religious places has played an affective and functional role over time.

Building industry is beset with some problems among which are the challenges of cost reduction through timely, delivery, quality control and health/safety measures. The problems of unavailability and unreadiness of materials and working implements at the correct time and place. They team up to hinder the operations from being carried out on schedule. Procurement of quality materials and implement vis-à-vis the deployment of health/safety measures go a long way to muddle up value chain and specification which in effect hampers effective public building delivery. To achieve the stated aim three core objectives are set out as follows: to examine the input of timely delivery; assess the effect of quality improvement and ascertain the impact of health/safety measures all as cost reduction strategies in public building project delivery in the South East Nigeria. The field survey research approach were adopted to collect relevant data, structured questionnaire on contemporary issues on material management was administered to over 760 respondent selected on the basis of randomized stratified samplings technique. Data collected from field survey were analyzed using appropriate statistical tools. Among the major findings of the study is the variation in cost reduction and significantly reduced cost of public building projects delivery. Diligent building construction management in the area of time economy, quality improvement and good health/safety measures correlate highly and positively with each other as relevant factors in effective public building projects delivery.