International Journal of Architectural Engineering & Urban Planning
Volume:24 Issue: 1, Jun 2014

Vaulted structure has been in use for nearly 4000 years and believed to have been studied by scientists and builders for nearly 2000 years. There are few publications about the geometry and constructional aspects of arches and vaults before Renaissance age. One of the most interesting works on this subject belongs to Jamshid Kashani known as a mathematician. Ghiayth Al-Din Kashani, has made some valuable contribution in the field of building construction in general and vaulted structures in particular. This paper aims to introduce and analyze a part of his work on building construction, that is on pointed arches. In this paper first we provide a short history of pointed arch. Then we will see a number of works from Roman period to Kashani age which had some contribution about arches. The third part of the paper deals with Kashani''s book Meftah Al-Hesab or the key of mathematics. The final section of the paper has devoted to Kasahni''s contribution to pointed arches. And finally showing one of the calculation charts which could be used to find different parts of the arches can be the best case in the point.

Creating suitable classrooms that can meet the educational needs of mentally-retarded students is vitally important. The present study explores the effect of three physical characteristics of classroom environment on the creativity of educable mentally-retarded children: window view, window size, and classroom size. The participants, one hundred 9-to-11-year-old girl students, took the Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP). The results indicate that natural window view, larger window size (which provides a broader vision), and larger class size positively affected the creativity of the students. The findings of the study can be taken into account in designing psychology-oriented classroom environments that can improve the creativity of students.

Urban parks are important public multifunctional space used for a wide range of activities. The usage levels of parks depend on the spatial characteristics of the spaces, where its forms and occupancies are referred as the usage-spatial relationship. Natural elements spatial complexity and park usability is of interest in this study. A photo - questionnaire was conducted among 296 of park users in Tabriz, Iran to gauge the relationship between park usability dimensions and natural elements complexity levels. The result revealed three dimensions for park usability namely social activities, passive nature activities, and nature appreciation where passive nature activities received the highest preference. The results from SEM models addressed non-significant relationship between park usability and high complexity level of natural elements; meanwhile there was a significant positive relationship between social activities and moderate complexity of natural elements. A negative significant relationship of nature appreciation and positive relationship of social activities with low complex natural elements were observed. Landscape designers should avoid suggesting crowded planting areas (high complexity), which obstruct visibility in urban park and probably reduce perceived safety. It seems that water features show positive effect on people’s desire to do activities in urban park. Spatial configuration of vegetation contributed in park usability level and a safe feeling in urban park which might be necessary for future researches.

Human’s disregard to nature and consequently his living environment’s distance from natural endowments and potentials have caused many problems. Human’s living spaces are less desirable for him, and have destroyed his comfort in many cases, as man-made things. In this regard, public open spaces in residential areas can be mentioned because they are usually considered among the most vulnerable spaces due to having the least thermal comfort and spatial quality. This is because they are able to provide comfort only if they interact with nature and use natural energy sources such as sun, wind, plants etc. In this regard, this study focused on providing comfort specifically thermal comfort in residential public open spaces by using natural endowments and energies especially the sun and shade provided by solar radiation. This study aimed to analyze the climatic factors in Yazd meteorological station, especially the temperature and radiation analysis and making this information meaningful regarding human’s thermal comfort in open spaces to introduce the climate potentials specifically the sun. Then, some traditional houses in Yazd were analyzed, their length, width and heights were surveyed, the real shade masks of the walls in yards were measured, and a logical relationship was observed between solar radiation and yard proportions and how the shade is formed in these yards. Therefore, it could be concluded what the role of these proportions and the best yard proportions is to provide the thermal comfort in open spaces.

Lighting plays a key role in night escapes of urban spaces, in a way that it can be effective in giving identity to them. By considering this importance and inexistence of a process for composing urban Lighting strategy made this study to be conducted by the objective of providing process for compilation of context-oriented lighting strategy in urban spaces. Reaching a suitable solution for Lighting in urban spaces, a process is needed which can encompass all different aspects in the context of lighting. In this way, a process is proposed via that this shortage can be compensated. This process, at first considers basic urban studies including historical, cultural, religious, social, ceremonial and land-use and then the design scenario is propounded and in order to investigate the urban spaces context via space syntax method, the integration parameter is used. Later on, guiding is propounded which can be analyzed by Intelligibility parameter from space syntax method. And also designing alternatives can be analyzed by space syntax method. By studying the organizer structure and its prioritizing, we could achieve the lighting originated from the context. The last part of process is based on observance of the topics related to light pollutions which has a very critical role in lighting. In this study the analytic-descriptive research method with modeling and simulation are applied to achieve a context-oriented lighting process in urban spaces. The results of this study are showing that the provided process can be applied practically for lighting by considering the urban context. So this study has practical aspects and it can create a suitable strategy for lighting urban design and planning.

There are many evident that people are more interested in walking in attractive urban spaces and inappropriate physical and psychological condition can reduce their presence in a remarkable amount. The current research investigates the influence of physical design and psychological elements and their criteria on selective physical activity and specifically walking in urban public spaces. However there are some limitations in determining specifications of physical and psychological design which have effects on walking, meanwhile the urban planning elements, transportation and crime prevention via environmental design are developed strategies which have potentials for influencing the rate of pedestrian-oriented state of urban spaces. The research frameworks which are extracted from the complex of these elements include 5 applied criteria of safety, aesthetics, destination and (environmental) security which are specified by use of documentation and library method. In this paper, the public general spaces of Farahzad village were selected by field study and by help of questioning technique which its statistical community included 12 urban planning experts, the mentioned criteria were analyzed by Analytic Network Process. The results indicates that the quality of physical design and the psychological elements have major effect on pedestrian-oriented state of urban spaces and the importance degree of each criterion in determining the rate of pedestrian-oriented state of urban spaces of Farahzad village included the aesthetics, security and applied indicators in a value level, destination and safety. Meanwhile, the most pedestrian-oriented spaces of Farahzad village were specified by considering the mentioned criteria and by use of Analytic Network Process. Cognition of this issue will help the above-mentioned options to overcome their challenges which are creating attractive and dynamic urban space via improving the condition.

Environmental Justice (EJ) concept consists of multifaceted movements, community struggles, and discourses in contemporary societies that seek to reduce environmental risks, increase environmental protections, and generally reduce environmental inequalities suffered by minority and poor communities; a term that incorporates ‘environmental racism’ and ‘environmental classism, ’ captures the idea that different racial and socioeconomic groups experience differential access to environmental quality. This article explores environmental justice as an urban phenomenon in urban planning and applies it in peri-urban environment of a metropolis. Tehran peri-urban environments which are the result of meeting the city- village- nature systems or «city-village junction» have gradually faced effects such as accelerated environmental decline, changes without land-use plan, and severe service deficiencies. These problems are instances of environmental injustice which make the planners to adjust the problems and use and apply the appropriate strategies and policies by looking for solutions and resorting to theories, techniques and methods related to environmental justice. In order to access to this goal, try to define environmental justice through justice and determining environmental justice indices to analysis environmental injustice in case study. Then, make an effort to introduce some criteria to select case study in two micro and micro levels. Qiyamdasht town as the peri-urban environment of Tehran metropolis is chosen and examined to show the existence of environmental injustice by questionnaire analysis and SPSS software. Finally, use AIDA technique to design a strategic plan and reduce environmental injustice in case study by introducing the better scenario to be used in policy- and decision-making areas.