فصلنامه مسکن و محیط روستا
پیاپی 146 (تابستان 1393)

The main objective of this research is developing the quality of rural housing in Iran. To fulfill this objective, a participatory action plan has been proposed for construction of a rural dwelling in a specific village (as a sample case). In the first step, based on the literature review, rural housing pattern has been identified. Then, different approaches to people participation in housing construction have been studied and a theoretical frame work has been developed. Accordingly, the feasibility of participation approach in rural housing in Iran has been discussed. As the architectural design is a part of rural housing construction process and providing a desirable house depends on a comprehensive planning, a rural housing pattern has been presented in two levels: 1. Presenting project management plan which defines a process including architectural design. 2. Realization of the action plan Although for an appropriate design, all the steps defined earlier in this process need to be applied, but applying the first step was approximately impossible due to many limitations faced in a research. For the second step based on a model including strategic planning and organizing design, a field study has been carried out in a given house located in Baloqyah Village in Meshkin Shahr. Baloqyah has been located on the foot of a hill and has cold and long winters. In the sample house which has been considered for the pilot project, a family of seven has been living. Farming was the main livelihood of the family. The house composed of two residential buildings (old and new), a barn and the related equipment. The most important objectives of field studies were: - Studying vernacular architecture and residents lifestyle - Evaluating the performance of residential and farming units - Understanding the needs and desires of residents - Climatic evaluation of buildings Finally, desirability of the house from the residents view point has been evaluated through several checklists. To examine the suggested method presented in this paper, an ideal plan for a house has been developed. This had been done with the help of local people. In this procedure a layout has been provided in interaction with the residents and then, architectural drawings have been presented. Final plans have been provided by applying residents’ opinions. Accordingly, the positive and negative points of the given plans have been discussed by both the experts and the local people. Regarding the outcomes of pilot project, some instructions for enhancing inhabitant's participation in rural housing have been given.

Architectural programing, an applied research and a process of decision making, is an important phase of architectural design process. Thus it must be regarded as “the basic activity” in architectural schools as well as in architectural consulting firms. Success in the design phase: preparing correct selection of spaces with accurate floor areas, appropriate organization of facility sources, defined relationships between the closed and open spaces, as well as suitable companion of the whole project with its context, depends on how the programming phase had been developed. To fulfill this attitude, the architect/programmer must be aware of the knowledge of architectural programming and have adequate professional experience in this field. The architectural programming texts usually consist of many subjects which gives the information about the history of this knowledge, the basic definitions, the literature, the scholars, the process of research, the methods of data gathering, the structure of the product, the other types of research in architecture activity, the programming design interaction in the design process, etc. In this article, the author tries to define three important subjects,” the process of programing”, “the structure of the program” and “the method of data gathering and analyzing the data”. In the first subject, the article defines eight steps which the programmer should take from the first meeting with client, till providing the programs final report and approval, the second subject presents the outline of the program, relying on the functional specifications of design product, and the third one indicates the type of questions, the type of sources and the method of achieving the information. To provide this article, as a part of series of articles on architectural programing, the author relied on universal literature of this field and then discussed it in architectural workshops and programming courses in architectural schools as well as utilizing it in practice in the last two decades, in order to achieve a simple language far from complications and misunderstandings, easy to be utilized in academy and practice.

In recent decades, the quality of life has been one of the many topics of interest to scientific researchers, planners and governments. Since the socio-cultural and environmental factors influence quality of life, there are different levels of subjective indicators for quality of life in different societies. Also, to this important debate, the lack of scientific research in the study area and ethnicity there with their special features in this region, using descriptive and analytical studies relying on documents, in this study for measuring the level indicators subjective quality of life, as well try to improve the quality of life in villages in South Jafarbay (Turkmen county). The traditional culture of Turkmen people in case study area with specific characteristics on social and religious behavior, beside on their livelihood is one of the causes of selecting this issue. Unlike the results of other researchers across the country, these people perceive they are living a desirable life. They believe that achieving higher levels of well-being generally requires moving away from the beliefs and their ethnic – cultural characteristics. In this regard, eight territories quality of life is education, health, security, offline environment, infrastructure, employment and income, leisure and social cohesion and interaction field is given by questionnaire was evaluated. Also, to understand the factors affecting quality of life, 11 independent variables including age, education, number of people employed in the household to enjoy the village level, household income, assets, housing area, belonging to the rural environment, area and belongs to the environment ethnic-specific features - was calculated. The reliability of questionnaires was assessed about 0.9 using Cronbach's alpha. Based on stratified sampling, 8 villages from 17 villages of the district was selected. The village model potential (for regionalization development) were selected and totally 228 questionnaires were distributed among the selected sample. The results of the questionnaire using the mean field and statistical tests T, by SPSS software were analyzed. The results showed that despite the subsistence and enjoyment of the facilities in the area is relatively low, but because of some reasons such as Turkmen folk traditional culture and social characteristics, religion and their livelihood, extraction and ancestral places of interest and properties of introversion and isolationist, these deficiencies are relatively low. So it can be said that the more the influence of ethnic features and adherence to Turkmen culture in the people of the area, the more their satisfaction level based on subjective indices of quality of life.

City of Meybod, like other ancient cities of Iran, has the Sasanian’s urban system which consists of Kohandejh, Sharestan and Byruneh. Keshtkhans have formed, outside the Sharestan wall, in Byroonehs and have had a close relationship, from the beginning, with the city life. As the main mode of inhabitants’ subsistence, farming and animal husbandry would play an important role in the formation of the Meybod as a garden city so that by the expansion of the city and the formation of Byrunehs, it needed areas to assist farmers in farming and gardening and finally led to Keshtkhany towers in the fields and gardens. This suggests the importance of economic, social and political aspects of the time. As in the range of historical studies, it is almost hidden from researchers, in this paper, ten examples of this type of towers, scattered in Meybod, were identified by Interview with local informants and field-work method. It has been tried to analyze and present such architectures in two steps. In the first step, different parts of a Kshtkhvany tower are introduced and then the background of the formation, naming and the main factors of towers location is presented. After that, the relationship between architecture and this kind of tower is investigated from the view point of environment – frame. As the result, it is founded that Keshtkhany towers, consisted of Mill and Gombeh, are multi-functional. Such a comprehensive idea, from the view point of environment, frame, function, etc, can belong to an architect who has grown up with this kind of livelihood (farming); so he can convey his experience and knowledge to the next generation.

Abstract in International law, particularly the 11th International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) to adequate housing as one of the basic needs of every individual and family to live with human dignity is recognized and its as a key indicator of the quality of life of residents concerned. In our country, housing is a basic need of the second, thirty-first and forty-third proposed constitution and government to provide decent housing for all segments of society, especially the poor and rural groups. In other words, Housing as a major structural part of the settlement, plays an essential role in the formation of spatial- physical embodiment structure and identity of rural architecture, and The most important measure of housing satisfaction can be summed up in its strength. The key issue with unsafe consequences of the earthquake in rural habitations are frame structures. This means that more than 95 percent of all deaths from earthquakes are a result of the destruction of the traditional houses. With respect to the unstablity in geographical conditions in relation to earthquake natural disaster in Iran, due to non-compliance with technical standards in the construction, use of traditional and non-resistant building materials and housing being worn, leading to greater vulnerability of rural settlements in earthquake disaster. Therefore, one of the most important physical vulnerability reduction strategies in rural areas, rural housing fund retrofitting as part of rural development funds in a phased payment, This is in order to promote the safety, health, welfare and prosperity of rural widely supported by the state and are paid by commercial banks. Necessary for Payment of rural housing loans in implementation (using) of technical standards and building codes and regulatory compliance Engineers Housing Foundation and local agencies. Evaluation of existing literature regarding the reasons for the vulnerability of rural houses showes that in addition to geological instability settlements site, to items such as the use of non-standard and less durable Building materials, Lack of standards and building codes, aging buildings, Lack of effective monitoring, inadequate infrastructure - economic and. .. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of providing housing finance in rural areas to reducing of vulnerability to earthquake disasters is to improve the physical conditions of rural settlements. For this purpose, Data for this study were collected using questionnaires and interviews. And using SPSS Software and Wilcoxon tests (to analyze differences before and after), Friedman and one sample T tests, was used for data analysis. The results of data analysis showed a significant difference in the period before and after using the rural housing loans application of physical factors affecting the housing finance housing vulnerability reduction is. The Friedman test showed mean square coefficient also shows a difference in favor of the next period, and improved indicators.

Identity has been at the center of architectural discourse from World War II. But its multi-dimensional nature which goes back to its relevance to many fields of humanities (sociology, psychology, urbanism etc.) made its literature vague to some extent. To make a clarification of meaning of identity due to its abstract relation to built environment is the main purpose of this research. The method of confronting the problem is analyzed by using Geddes’s thinking machine where one of the four possible ways in it selected for this study. Here the priority is placed on concept of Identity and Architectural Identity is seen as a subdivision of it. Before concentrating on absolute concept of architectural identity a brief discussion of various kinds of identity in literature of architectural theory is considered where four main type is identified: personal or group identity via architectural form, socio-cultural identity interpreted via built environment, human identity for himself pursued vie architecture and architectural absolute identity (as the one that no other thing than architecture itself is under consideration). If we define identity as a kind of recognition arises from human experiment with built space or unity of mental expectation with perceptional content of this experiment then it would be a natural strategy to pursue the subject via human perceptional dimensions. These dimensions upon their place in the spectrum of material-spiritual perception can be proposed in four categories: 1. Physical or bodily dimension; 2. Mental dimension; 3. Social dimension and 4. Spiritual dimension. These kinds of perceptions are in turn subdivided in two main categories due to their source of stimulation: natural environment or man-made environment. There is a third and important factor for analyzing these four types of recognition that must be taken into account: what kind of recorded content of the brain is referred. At least four kinds of them can be seen due to the duration of the recorded humane experiment: 1. Immediate perception; 2. Life-long experiment; 3. Inherited image from previous generations (archetypical) and 4.timeless experiment of human-being; upon these three factor a cubical model of 32 separate positions each of which is representative of a different dimension of architectural identity as it relates to human experiment. It is supposed that any characteristic of human perception which can be related to absolute identity of architecture has a certain location in this model, so the model is holistic in containing all possibilities but not in proving any claim about existence or not-existence of any kind of humane experiment. For searching the potential of the model for making this holistic view a real example of vernacular architecture of Ilam (a south-western province of Iran) is explored from point of view of identity of built environment for vernacular people, both dwellers of such an environment and non-dwellers. This study which is presented in a table shows the potential of model not only for having a systematic analyze of identity aspects of an architecture but also makes it evident that via such a model we can guess some new aspects of identity of that case which have not ever been considered.

Transition from growth concept to the concept of development among policy makers and planners has been aimed for overcoming the challenges emerged due to economic growth programs and neglecting social and cultural aspects in many human settlements. In fact, lack of attention to social, economic and cultural aspects in the process of growth led to posing life quality issue in the process of development among planners. Hence, improvement of life quality in rural communities became the ultimate goal of rural development projects and plans. But the main prerequisite of achieving this goal is providing suitable conditions for living (livability) that can pave the way for life quality improvement in rural communities. Currently, low quality of living conditions in rural settlements of our country has deprived many of people from suitable living quality and this can be a reason for population reduction. Since different interpretations have been presented for livability and its indices, the present study aims to identify livable rural communities’ indices and also evaluate these conditions in present situation in rural settlements of Kahak area of Qom Province. The method of present research is descriptive-analytical and document and survey investigations were selected as techniques of this study. Statistical population of this research include all permanent residents of 9 villages of Kahak area in Qom Province (N = 6935) of which 364 individuals were selected through categorical random sampling. Results indicate that economic indices such as job, income level, saving rate, etc. among other criteria have significant contribution in determination of livability degree in rural areas of this region. Moreover, the results of adaptive comparison of settlements using Tukey and Dunnette test indicated that although some villages have more population and services and facilities, they suffer lower livability than other less population villages (life conditions quality). Therefore, elimination of economic challenges and enabling the villagers to improve their living quality and reduce differences in living conditions is the most important livability factor in rural settlements. On the other hand, continuity of present conditions, such as making villages hierarchical in order to provide required services and facilities for villages cannot be regarded a suitable policy for improving living conditions in villages; because under such conditions, economic dynamism and competition among rural settlements in attracting private sector capital and opportunities of high level services attraction would be impossible. Hence, only by improving some indices it cannot be expected that sufficient dynamism is provided for sustainability in new period and living quality and quantity needed to be improved in any village considering their potentials.

Spatial interactions and functional relationships between cities and surrounding areas such as rural areas located in their influence zones gradually lead to a variety of changes in their different aspects. Demographical changes (migration of rural-urban, population evacuation etc.) and changes in economic and functional structure (weakening of the base and foundation of agricultural activities and expansion of non-productive activities etc.) are not exceptions. In this regard, among the important changes of this kind which are influenced by the cities and mainly observed in the rural areas of Iran in recent years are the functional changes in the rural areas of the metropolitan zones of Tabriz including Lyghvan Valley with its villages which are of great importance due to their ecological features in complementing Tabriz Metropolitan. Therefore, such villages being influenced by the metropolitan, experience changes in their functional structure. Most probably, the existence of various problems and setbacks in Tabriz metropolitan such as higher price of land and housing, acute air pollution and other factors have been unappealing cases as opposed to the lower price of land and housing, cleanness of air and tourist attraction and so on in the rural settlements which are very attractive. In the present paper, four villages have been selected among the rural settlement zone of Tabriz metropolitan to clarify how functional changes and the factors influencing them work. The main goal of the study is to obtain a thorough and scientific understanding of the affecting factors on the functional changes of these villages. The present study, not only gives important data about the way the changes occur, but also helps the planners strive for the organization and functional planning of such villages using the given data. The method of study is based on field study (direct observation, filling out various questionnaires). To study and express the relationships between the different variables of the study, a descriptive-analytical method and to review the previous works and changes and developments, documentary methods have been used. Meanwhile, in order to analyze the data, SPSS Software and chi-square and F-statistics have been used. Finally, strategies and recommendations have been presented for better functional organization of the villages under study in specific, and of all such villages in general. The findings show that there is a logical relationship between being host for immigration of the villages under study, the kind of their economic activities, the place of the occupation of the breadwinners of the households, and their functional changes. The proximity of the studied villages to the largest demographic, industrial and service center of the north-west (Tabriz) and also Basmenj and the fast and easy access of these villages to these cities, the immigration of people to these villages because of the lower price of land and housing, work and occupation, changes in the kind of economic activities and the place of occupation of the heads of the households under study, all have led to a functional change of villages from an agricultural one to service, industrial, housing-dormitory ones.