Explaining the Vernacular Housing Patterns and Rating Their Sustainability (Case Study: Roeen Village, North Khorasan Province)

Neglecting the values of vernacular housing types in contemporary rural constructions and the deterioration and destruction of vernacular housing as a threat in historical contexts make it necessary to pay attention to the recognition and analysis of architectural types and sustainability criteria of vernacular houses. The present research studied the village of Roeen in North Khorasan Province. Despite the valuable texture and types of rural architecture, until now, researchers have not extracted and analyzed the architectural patterns of the valuable vernacular houses of the Roeen village. Therefore, the current research seeks to identify the vernacular housing patterns of the Roeen village in Esfarayen and to analyze and rank their sustainability in two stages. First, it compared the architectural features of vernacular Roeen houses in three macro, meso, and micro scales and extracted architectural partial patterns. Then, it identified seven ultimate patterns of housing architecture based on partial patterns. It ranked the final patterns based on the sustainability of vernacular rural housing, including cultural, social, environmental, and economic components through the analytical network process (ANP). According to the results, the most important distinct aspects of the patterns were the lighting of the living spaces, the number and relative size of courtyards on the ground floor, the orientation of the building, the mass form on the first floor, and its arrangement around the courtyard. Pattern two with a frequency of 22% with the main lighting of the living spaces and porch from the southwest and the L shape on the first floor was the most sustainable. Finally, the research has presented the design strategies of contemporary housing in Roeen Village.