The Typology of Tehran Residential Building Based on Open Space Layout

Limitations of metropolitan cities encourage developing residential complexes instead of small houses and on the other hand, neglecting the importance of the private yard in the contemporary architecture. In addition of providing accessibility to the sun light and natural ventilation, Open space affords an opportunity of direct connection to nature and creates a place for social interaction. According to the limited size of dwelling units, and based on the history of Iranian life relayed on the private yard; Open space provides an opportunity to develop and connect the internal activities to the exterior open space. Investigating contemporary open space is a base of successful design of residential open scape in a future. The aim of this research is exploring and making the typology of residential open space in order to increase concentration to the space between building and notice architects to design interior and exterior place simultaneously. Hence all residential complexes in the eight districts in the north of Tehran, allocated more than 65% of the site to the open space, were detected by satellite image and then were investigated by field survey. At the last stage, according to the block’s height, complexes’ scale and the style of open and close space arrangement, the dimensions of typology were molded. Result shows in Tehran designing open space does not have the priority in the design process, and main considerations are drawn toward interior space. In some cases open space is as a negative space between buildings. Due to existing intensive municipality law, designers have faced a lot of limitations to arrange residential blocks in the site. Therefore, creating a variety of open spaces and committing to the traditional courtyard are impossible. Analytical results indicate that tree dominant types of arrangement are free standing, linear and centralized blocks. Free standing blocks are the common type in the Tehran macro scale residential complexes. This type allows designers to create different space quality, for instance, hierarchy of private and public space. Linear arrangement is a conservative method founded on the existing context of the city. The paper concludes with some suggestions for the future researchers to create guidelines in order to increase the quality of residential open space.