International Journal of Architectural Engineering & Urban Planning
Volume:25 Issue: 2, Dec 2015

In the developing world, skills in innovation and creative design have emerged as key attributes for graduating designers. Creativity is essential if we want to generate new solutions to the considerable and complex problems in architecture. Metaphor is frequently expressed as a key tool for enhancing creative design, yet little empirical research has been performed on how novice designers can use it within their design. The goal of this study is to empirically research the use of metaphor in the design studio, with a focus on its effects on design creativity and quality. A three-stage method is presented, which allows novice designers to use meanings and metaphors in the early stages of design and idea generation. This method was tested in an architectural studio with two groups as experiment and control groups. The results were evaluated using a qualitative research methodology and a questionnaire was prepared in which the students were requested to assess the use of this method in their design process. Also expert designers evaluated the design outcomes in both control and experiment groups. The results highlight that metaphor is a helpful tool for young designers to stimulate design creativity and has a noticeable effect on design quality factors such as novelty, value, flexibility, usefulness and detail. These research findings have different implication for novice architects and help them enhance creativity and quality in their design endeavors.

Housing is the second need after food for human beings. Since the housing crisis began with the increase in population, respective governments were forced to construct houses for a large number of families. Ignoring the qualitative aspects of these houses has caused social and cultural harm. Therefore, designers need to pay more attention to the quality of housing and living environments. The main objective of this study is to find the most important factors that affect the quality of low- income housing. In order to achieve this goal, the first stage of the research was to undertake a systematic review of the literature and interview the residents. The housing environment factors were classified in four categories: environmental, functional, formal and semantic factors. In order to give priority to the factors, a questionnaire was distributed among 15 experts (according to the Delphi technique, two rounds of surveys were taken). In the first round, some factors were removed and a new category was added. In the second round, experts gave priority to the factors. Once the data was collected, the next stage was to analyze it. The statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software (version 18 SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). The results obtained - based on the weighting of each factor - showed that some factors, such as interior space function, volume, relationship with nature, safety and social security are the most effective factors of low-income housing quality.

The importance of small urban parks (SUP) in mega cities has been accepted as an essential component of urban lung and restorative settings. As urban population in the world increases and the cost of maintaining large parks escalates, urban authorities are shifting their attention to creating and maintaining smaller urban parks. However, SUP may present a different ambience due to their location, size and visual appearence. In this regard, visual preference which is associated with spatial configuration and content of space, plays a vital role. This research examined 394 respondents’ visual preferences related to 16 SUP located in the city of Tabriz, Iran. It employed a quantitative photo survey method, based on Kaplan and Kaplan's information-processing and Appleton’s prospect-refuge theories as preselected variables by expert panels. Results indicated that mystery, as an indicator of having winding shapes of paths and expansive body of trees, was the most preferred spatial configuration of space, followed by coherence, refuge and complexity. Legibility and prospect as indicators of wide perspective and sky lines with clear focal points were the least preferred constructs. The results provide information on preferred visual configurations for SUP that may assist urban designers and landscape architects to improve their design of these specific green areas for the public.

Traditional building technologies have much to teach us about how to design regionally appropriate structures. The Orosi is one of these useful technologies, which has been used for many centuries in order to control the harsh sunlight in Iran. This architectural element was rather important because the intensive solar radiation could easily damage valuable carpets used in most spaces in Persian buildings. The main question of this research was how much could the traditional Orosi windows reduce the harmful spectrums of sunlight? In order to investigate this effect, a combination of field study, laboratory measurements, and case study research method was applied. Nine Persian traditional Orosi windows were chosen as case studies and the windows’ geometric lattice (Gereh–Chini) and glazing color combinations were drawn and plotted. The experiment was carried out for carpeted and non–carpeted spaces. In order to measure the light transmission of the sample tinted glazing from the Orosi windows, a T80+ spectrophotometer was used. After calculating CIE and skin damage factors and visible transmittance for each piece of glass, an area weighting was used to calculate these factors for the entire Orosi. The results show a significant difference between CIE damage factors of the Orosis in carpeted and non–carpeted spaces where the carpeted spaces had the least amount of CIE damage factor.

This paper classifies green envelopes as green roofs and green walls according to effective factors, which were derived from literature to compare the green envelopes’ thermal and energy performance in a more effective way. For this purpose, an extensive literature review was carried out by searching keywords in databases and studying related journal papers and articles. The research method for this study was bibliographic and logical reasoning. The paper proposes five classification factors: contextual factors, greenery factors, scale factors and surface and integration factors. It also demonstrates the influence of physical and geometrical properties of plants and their supporting structures on the thermal performance of green envelopes. The paper argues that climatic conditions also have an important role on the thermal behavior of green envelopes and it determines the types of greenery integration into building envelopes.

Following development and qualitative and quantitative changes in communities, that have made substantial changes in historic environments, the authenticity concept has attracted attention in order to strike a balance between conservation and development approaches. The concept of authenticity as the transmitter of values and significance of cultural heritage, is regarded as a key criterion in the process of conservation and thus, the need for clarification of its factors has been emphasized in the international documents. This paper aims to refine the prioritization of authenticity factors in the plans and measures of the revitalization project of Atique Square in Isfahan, Iran. To achieve this, firstly the conventions and the international documents related to authenticity are reviewed using qualitative research methods and content analysis strategy consequently the effective factors in measuring authenticity have been selected in three main categories: ‘historical-evidential values’, ‘artistic values and creativity’, and ‘socio-cultural values’. After that, prioritizing these factors in the Atique Square revitalization, is analyzed by quantitative research method and correlation strategy. The findings indicate that the ‘historic- evidential values’, ‘socio-cultural values’ of the context and ‘artistic values and creativity’, in descending order, have the highest to the lowest contribution in explaining the concept of authenticity in the measures taken for the project of the Atique Square revitalization.