INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Year:2015 | Volume:5 | Issue:3 (17)|Papers Count:8

The aim of this paper is to explore conventional methods of teaching the arch-design studio with ideas of sustainability and creativity as agents of change. If this is realised, it means the students of architecture can be grounded in designing with sustainability and creativity ideas and can be professionals that design and build with ideas of creativity and sustainability. So, there are real buildings and places that satisfy our clients, the society and in harmony with the environment. The objectives are to know those and what it takes to participate and to explain and recommend the methods in teaching the arch-design studio. Stakeholders of architectural education have observed that the architectural design studio teaching is failing to meet the yearnings and needs of the users, societies, cultures, environments and technological developments and for solution have strongly argued for sustainability and creativity as a combined force of teaching the arch-design studio. Although there are similarities in the curricula of training architects all over the world, but educators go about it in their own convenient and suitable ways and styles and the ideas of sustainability and creativity are not taken seriously and also not formally incorporated in the curricula of training. These stakeholders say that something has to be done to improve the ways and methods of training architects, especially the teaching of the arch-design studio. The study finds collaboration of the academics and practicing architects, integrated team work of inter/multi-disciplinary and selection criteria in teaching the methods of ideas relating to sustainability and creativity in the arch-design studio.

Due to the poor social and economic conditions of vulnerable children's families, vulnerable children experience urban spaces for work and play more than other children. Although these children gain a solid understanding of urban spaces, which can be used in the process of designing desirable urban spaces in their neighborhoods, they are less considered in such projects. Thus, the methodology for the participation of vulnerable children is not developed well to be suited for their involvement in urban rehabilitation. This study examined the application of various qualitative methods to find the suitability of each method for vulnerable children participation in the urban rehabilitation, such as drawing, interview, visiting site and writing essays complemented with drawings, if desired. The results of the study in Tehran’s southern neighborhoods reveal that certain group interviews and site visiting with these children could be more beneficial as compared to other participation methods. This is due to a number of factors including better verbal skills as compared to writing and drawing capabilities. Further, studies show that the participation of vulnerable children requires suitable measures to obtain their trust and encourage participation. None-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) can play a significant role in this.

Migration of people to urban areas from the rural areas usually comes with its challenges in terms of infrastructural requirement and housing to cater for growing population. One of the challenge for the urban dwellers in Nigeria is that of adequate housing. The inability of the government to meet this demand has seen the people concerned seeking alternative solutions to housing need. The resulting settlements are usually unplanned hence becoming a challenge for government to manage in terms of providing infrastructure facilities. With the growing incidence of global warming and the attendant increase in flooding in most urban areas of Nigeria, especially between year 2000 and 2013, the safety of the people who live in slums have become a concern to the state governments due to issues of flooding and collapsed buildings. Government usually evicts such people and clear the settlement; however the people simply relocate to another area. The aim of this paper is to examine how community participation can be used to provide housing for the urban poor based on their living requirement, drawing from the experience of selected case studies from Kenya. The research method adopted for the study is a qualitative research method using case studies of selected communities in Kenya and selected communities in Nigeria. A comparative analysis is drawn with these communities. The research concludes by proposing how community participation process should be incorporated into provision of housing for the urban poor.

Without the surrounding environment of a site, architecture loses its full meaning. In the evolution of the design process, a site's environment should be understood as the integral factor within which a designed product or artifact is expected to perform. The environment is not of secondary priority. Every building is intertwined with its context; context being its physical, visual and ecological potentials. Modern day practice encourages the consideration of ecological factors in any plan to create/alter sites even for those who are not landscape architects. In the pedagogy of Tehran architecture schools today, the architectural design process barely touches upon landscape environment; this is a flawed presentation of architecture which should be remedied. In common practice of Iranian education, buildings rise to represent only themselves. The graduates of this lacking method owe their mal-education to the problematic studio education system. This paper presents both qualitative and quantitative evidence to support the notion that Tehran schools should change their teaching methodology to accommodate the importance of environment in the architectural design process. All research participants are students of architecture. The data, which includes content analysis exports and log-linear analysis, presents the difference between the students' point of view regarding a designed building and its relationship with the surrounding landscape.

Ego identity defined as a fundamental element of a person and as self-continuum, mental and inward image that an individual has about him or herself. This subject investigated in contemporary world, amply. For actualizing and testing this concept, four bases including achievement, moratorium, foreclosure and diffusion introduced and based on this framework, and the effect of different factors on ego identity of individuals assessed and evaluated. In the study, the effect of school architecture on students’ ego identity formation in high school investigated. For this purpose that AISS1 questionnaire has been used, in which, in schools of Iran is used for evaluation of ego identity, moreover its reliability and validity for Iran’s schools has been verified. In addition, for evaluation the effect of architecture on identity formation, intervention factors decreased to their minimum level in order to one could evaluate just the effect of architectural environment. It is important to note that results of filling 600 questionnaires from seven schools in two types of architectures, i.e., traditional and modern, have been compared. According to mentioned states, in this article the effect of environmental architecture on identity formation of high school students in Yazd and Tehran provinces is determined. This subject has evaluated and compared in two types of architecture environments: modern and traditional. For completion of this work, effective architecture components on ego identity formation in traditional and modern schools will introduce.

Urban space has been formed in historical texture of cities under the influence of meaning and shape on the one hand and qualities related to human behaviors on the other hand. Among these points, neighborhood centers as the most important areas of social life in urban open space play a critical role in attracting people and improving quality and vitality of environment. This study presents the related literature in an analytical approach and expresses the relationship between neighborhood centers and human presence by structure analysis; it focuses on rules governing presence quality and formed behaviors in this places. In this survey, human and his presence in neighborhood centers are evaluated and urban spaces concept is formed by composing space location characteristics and human behavior. At least, it is sated that people’ spresence in urban space of neighborhood centers expresses their thoughts and cultural interactions whose form shows its function and meaning. Therefore, humans would appear in urban space in a way that neighborhood centers quality depends on activity kind and their user's behavioral patterns.

The present article is intended to analyze the status of architectural education during two periods before and after Cultural Revolution in Iran and in order to interpret approaches and paradigms, methods, and way of its development thereby, it deals with criticism of current situation in the field of architectural education. For this purpose, it has been tried to separate different fields of quantitative and qualitative development of the discussed subject with historical review on formation of architectural academic schools during recent period. The methodology of current research is based on using the relevant information about structure of architectural education in Iran during two major periods, which have been subjected to data- mining by taking an interpretative- historical approach. In addition, the present condition has been criticized with review on the existing theories in this field and afterwards in order to achieve the given result and for conclusion of the contemporary attitudes in Iranian architectural education. Findings have been analyzed according to strategic analysis to disambiguate the process of planning for the future based on internal strong and weak point as well as external opportunities and threats (SWOT) in educational structure of architecture and eventually following to evaluation of today status and position becomes available for access in the future.

Defining space by dividing it to inside and outside is one of human’s ways to recognize his position in environment. Architecture is created to response to this need for inside/outside spaces. Design of inside and outside Spaces and relation between them always has been one of necessities for definition and limitation of human living spaces, but little attention to relation of this two spatial realms and poor design of transitional spaces between them has caused to lack of quality in current Iranian architecture. This study aims to explore relation of inside and outside in architecture and focus on condition of transition, boundary and connection of those. For achieving this purpose concept of inside, outside and in-between has been investigated and by exploring cases of this kind of connection (especially in past and recent Iranian architecture), the aims, approaches, functions and physical forms of in-between spaces has been presented. This results and findings can enhance design considerations of in-between spaces especially in architecture of Iran’s big cities. Literature reviewed has shown importance of in-between space design as another kind of space: either inside and outside, neither one of them.