International Journal of Architecture and Urban Development
Volume:9 Issue: 4, Autumn 2019

Although a growing body of literature maintains that the construction industry plays a significant role in the economic development world-over, the extent of its regulation may, however, undermine the objectives of sustainable urban development. This study, as a result, investigates the factors influencing quality assurance within the building construction industry in Kenya, a case study of Kisii town. The target population comprised of 7430 residential developments from seven neighbourhoods that were spatially segregated using a high-resolution satellite image. Proportional stratified random sampling was thereafter adopted to select 364 developers through questionnaires. Results indicated that the key factors that undermine the extent of quality assurance within the building construction industry in the study area included failure to obtain a development permit, non-engagement of registered professionals in building design, an inadequate inspection of buildings during construction phases and unauthorized occupation of buildings by developers. The study concludes that despite the existing legal framework, these challenges continue owing to inadequate development control by the County Government of Kisii. This study contributes to the literature on the built environment by demonstrating how factors limiting quality assurance within the construction industry may be statistically analyzed.

A vibrant and commercially active center is often the result of interesting, diverse building styles and or built-forms, pedestrian density along with variety of quality public places where people feel comfortable, spending time and shopping items for domestic and commercial functions in cities like Addis Ababa. The scale and design of buildings, pedestrian density, and other physical characteristics will determine the quality of built form and public spaces and how well they create an attractive and pedestrian friendly and welcoming environment in relation to built-up and pedestrian density.On the other hand, not many studies have been undertaken in relation to the concept and theory of “Pedestrian Density and Quality of Spaces”. This research is aimed to analyze and explore the relationship among urban space quality, pedestrian density and built-form of the city in commercially active centers so as to contribute to a better understanding of the correlation among pedestrian density, built-form and quality of urban space. Hence, the study employed multiple data sources through quantitative and qualitative approaches (Triangulation). Finally, the research ended with arriving at answers for research questions through both statistical and non statistical techniques. The research result has highly addressed and concluded that Pedestrian friendly Streets with pedestrian density thresholds in commercially active built-environments are places that people like walking and want to stay in, with real character and sense of place. It concludes with an overview of emerging thinking/implications where further efforts are required in the future

The main purpose of this paper is to explain the factors affecting the change of service land uses in the city of Shiraz and identify its reasons. For this purpose, the second-order confirmatory factor analysis technique has been used as one of the structural equation modeling techniques to determine the severity of the effect of the four factors on land use change, through which a contributing framework for the effects of the four factors (physical, activity, economic, accessibility) on land use change is obtained. Finally, the extent and direction of the factors affecting the realization of service land uses in the city of Shiraz are explained using the structural equation model (SEM). In order to achieve these goals, 50 variables affecting 600 plots in Shiraz city are extracted through field method. The variables are investigated and analyzed using GIS maps, Amos and SPSS software, and a series of bi-variable correlations in a table called correlation matrix or covariance, the most notably of which are confirmatory factor analysis and SEM. The results of the research show that, in total, the selected four factors have a significant effect on the land use change. It is such that the standardized weights of regression for "the effect of the access factor on land use change", "the effect of the economic factor on land use change", "the effect of the activity factor on land use change", and "the effect of the physical factor on land use change" are 0.91, 0.78, 0.65, and 0.56, respectively.

The level of satisfaction with an environment differs among individuals, which may be caused by social, psychological and physical factors. One of the environmental factors affecting physical and mental satisfaction, is the thermal condition of space. In recent years, the importance of thermal comfort has been accentuated due to the climate change and global warming, increasing the number of studies performed on this subject around the world. The objective of the present study is to identify the main concepts raised in Iran about outdoor thermal comfort by studying and classifying the studies in this field and then by identifying the characteristics of each distinguished category of studies. Thus, this study reviews 142 papers written in Iran that were published in the period between 1999 and 2017. The papers are first classified into two main categories (including fundamental studies on thermal comfort and practical studies) and three secondary categories that are subsets of the second main category (including macroscale, mesoscale, and microscale studies). Each category is then studied and analyzed in more details according to the regions and climates considered, methodology and research means, effective factors and thermal indices used for evaluation. Accordingly, strengths and weaknesses of previous studies are identified and suggestions for future studies on the microclimate scale have been made. Eventually, the conceptual model of thermal comfort studies is presented in different climatic scales.

The impetus behind this study is to discover the aesthetic and semantic patterns of the cypress tree and show how this element has been employed by Iranian artists. The question of this research is how a constant element (the cypress tree) has been transfigured in different Iranian arts. Four categories of miniature, carpet, textile and architecture decoration. The present research is qualitative in nature and is descriptive-analytic and mainly uses the available published data. Data were analyzed inductively and interpreted in the light of Gestalt theory. Exploratory results reveal that the cypress as a constant element in Iranian art has been transfigured differently in different arts. With the aid of Gestalt laws, the visual appearance of the cypress tree was analyzed in the different samples a few of them are presented in the study. It was found that distinguishing the cypress element has been made: by highlighting the role of the cypress and reducing the visual significance of the field while increasing the visual emphasis of the cypress. Application of different gestalt laws such as proximity, figure, and ground, similarity, continuity in Persian carpet mostly makes the cypress at the center of attention and reduces the visual importance of the other elements. In some of the other Persian carpet designs, this element has semantic and extraterrestrial concepts and sits is in the center (eg. Mehrabi carpets. In the miniature and fabric textiles, cypress tree has not received the urgent priority and often been on the margins of the image.

By increasing house demand for living, the urban development planning has turned to towers, which provides a platform for the growth of the city, regardless of the traditional Iranian's architecture. Among the vital elements in traditional architecture, there are a variety of open and semi-open spaces such as the central courtyard, pool, veranda, balcony, etc that have been provided the needs for social interactions, privacy and other values among the inhabitants, but it is almost destroyed by the contemporary architecture. Therfore the necessity is to turn social interactions into spaces of residential complexes. Since in the variety of the quality of spaces, the architect has the most effective role, in a branch of interactive architecture, the most important thing is the interaction with the external environment that countless theorists have focused on this. The purpose is to explain the effective components of open and semi-open spaces in the presence and increase of social interactions in residential complexes. The research method was qualitative and based on the experts' descriptions, the characteristics of open and semi-open spaces were extracted and then their impact and interaction on the quality of space were investigated and adapted to the final model of interactive residential complex. Factors such as quality, security, the possibility of the presence of children, sense of belonging to the place and social discipline in different types of open and semi-open spaces, can have an effect on the adaptation of the spatial structure of residential complexes on the more interactions of residents.