Designing Earth Sheltered Architecture baced on Sustainable Architecture to Reduce Building Energy Consumption in a Warm and Dry Climate: Case of Shahroud City

In recent decades, the environmental crisis in the world has been widely considered leading to the concern of human society. Due to the continuous reduction of non-renewable energy and the prevalance of sustainable energy resources (sun, land, wind and…); the architects having serious foot prints in the environment, should think about innovative solutions to reduce the energy consumption in buildings. The soil architecture is the most original and the oldest tradition of Iranian architecture leading to sustainable and green architecture because of certain characteristics of soil such as the high thermal capacity and significant heat latency. This research, baced on visual observations, library studies and experimental models investigates the climatical specifications of Shahroud neighborhood and propeses the architectural design of on- road recreational buildings, taking into consideration their energy consumption. The results indicate a meaningful energy saving induced by earth sheltered architecture model