RSS 1.0Faculty Research and Publications
Recent Submissions
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Modeling Tactical Urbanism: A Contemporary Approach for Urban RegenerationUrban regeneration aims, among other objectives, to revive the city’s declined and sluggishly animated public spaces. Nevertheless, most of these projects target the city’s principal public spaces, such as central parks, squares, downtown, and waterfronts. Whether selectively, consecutively, or collectively carried out, the magnitude of these projects usually drains the city’s budget as they consume extended times, resulting in a few numbers being implemented in those primary spaces and fewer directed to the city’s secondary spaces. This paper focuses on developing a strategic multi-tiered framework to revive underutilized public spaces considering the time and cost layers. Such a framework builds on the employment of “local events” as a viably flexible and low-cost “Temporary Urbanism” tactic to revive poorly utilized city spaces of different grades. The research employs a qualitative and a desktop analysis approach to develop a framework to assist the city’s stakeholders in taking necessary and efficient actions to activate the city’s spaces as a parallel tool for traditionally used urban regeneration approaches.
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THE ROLE of LEGISLATIONS in UPGRADING URBAN ENVIRONMENT of SLUMS AREAS in ARAB COMMUNITIES: Applied study on slums at Kingdom of Saudi Arabiaتعاني أغلب المجتمعات العربية من التوسع العمراني العشوائي الذي تواكب مع التنامي الشديد في معدلات النمو السكاني بها خلال العقود القليلة الماضية، ويعتبر من أكبر التحديات التي تواجه مجتمعات العالم النامي بصفة عامة والمجتمعات العربية بصفة خاصة، حيث تعد المناطق العشوائية أحد أهم المشاكل التي تواجه إدارات المدن - بمختلف مسمياتها - في العالم العربي، فإضافة لكونها صعبة التطوير والتفاعل مع المجتمع والإندماج في النسيج العمراني المنتظم، فإنها غالباً ما تكون بؤرا للمخاطر الاجتماعية والبيئية والصحية وعقبة في تطوير المدن عمرانياً واجتماعياً، لذا فإن مساعدة إدارات المدن على حل مشكلة العشوائيات تمثل أهمية كبرى، ولما كانت التشريعات من الأدوات الرئيسة التي تستخدمها إدارات المدن في تنظيم شئون المدينة بما في ذلك تنظيم العمران، فلابد أن يكون للمعالجات التشريعية دور مؤثر في حل هذه المشكلة. يناقش البحث ويحلل دور التشريعات في التعامل مع البيئة العمرانية العشوائية، ويطبق ذلك الدور في المدينة بصفة عامة والمدينة العربية بصفة خاصة؛ من خلال دراسة متسلسلة لمفهوم العشوائيات عالمياً وبالمجتمعات العربية، ثم دراسة وافية لعدد من التجارب العالمية والعربية في المعالجة التشريعية للتعامل مع البيئة العمرانية للمناطق العشوائية، وصولا إلى تحديد دور التشريعات العمرانية في الارتقاء بالبيئة العمرانية للمناطق العشوائية في المجتمعات العربية، ثم تحديد الأسس الرئيسة والفرعية للمعالجات التشريعية للتعامل مع البيئة العمرانية بالمناطق العشوائية بالمدينة العربية.
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How to Think Architecture: Inspirational Note to Architecture StudentsThis bilingual book addresses both the Arabic speaker and international student in a methodic four-sectioned journey. It takes the reader from theory to practice by knocking on the doors of multiple architecture-related avenues. It addresses a range of theoretical and applied architectural issues. These start from how a student should think and how to be creative, as well as to show the context in which graduates will work. It then takes the reader through the main basic pillars of architecture. This is imbued with a pragmatic tackling of how architects design. The final section is dedicated to a hand-picked number of selected projects that are analyzed.
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Child-Friendly Open Spaces: Towards Safety in Residential NeighborhoodsRapid urbanization, high traffic density, and lack of open spaces are noticeable challenges that impose several repercussions on children within the urban context and restrict them from living a normal childhood. Independent mobility is reduced according to the spatial deprivation of children from pedestrian experiences in urban environments. Consequently, children’s opportunities for active engagement and participation in social life will be diminished. Residing in safe environments is a fundamental right that should be granted to all children around the world. Recently, child-friendly urban design has gained a lot of attention due to its remarkable advantages as it brings children’s needs and desires into practice. Creating safe, child-friendly open spaces contributes to protecting children from traffic injuries and crimes while at the same time stimulating their imagination and nurturing communication skills. This paper addresses the topic of safe, child-friendly open spaces in residential neighborhoods, which can significantly improve the life, health, and growth of children with a focus on social and traffic aspects within the urban context. Identifying the design principles of safe, child-friendly open spaces is the main aim that will be tackled. To achieve this goal, the research will follow a theoretical approach by applying a qualitative research methodology through historical interpretation and understanding of the main characteristics and design principles of child-friendly open spaces. This would be followed by an evaluative analysis of a related case-study. The expected results of this research are planned to introduce an adapted design model for safe child-friendly open spaces in residential neighborhoods for the local context of Saudi cities with more focus on both social and traffic safety aspects.
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The Role of Criticism in Architectural Education: An Experimental Model for Enhancing the Architectural Students' Critical Skills in Design StudioThe study descends from the group of studies that bragged about the development of the architectural education process. It focuses on enhancing the cognitive panes and dimensions in the education process. The study raises some questions about the architectural design objectives and philosophies and its success in achieving the goals of the educational process, where architectural design is referred to as being at the ‘core’ of architectural education. The study gives attention to the architectural design approach to scrutinize the defective features to struggle to solve one of these panes. It relies on a collective methodology that manages architectural design as a creative process, which tries to acquire suitable solutions for the problems of the surrounding society and environment within a collective framework. The study argues the problem of the absence of a structured framework to develop the critical skills of the architectural student as a mean for enhancing his/her higher mental skills. Consequently, the study aims to structure an experimental model to improve the self-critical skills of architectural students. The study adopted an empirical approach that relies on two main axes: The first axis is the analytical study with a preliminary chapter followed by three theoretical parts; the second axis is the applied study with one part, While the final chapter focuses on the results and recommendations.
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Building Technology Sustainablism—New VisionThe concern of the world at present to preserve the environment and the life of human societies on earth represents the most important global trends, and the subsequent trend towards sustainability that aims at the development that enables the enjoyment of the environmental resources and natural values that we use now. Therefore, development must be dealt with broad insight in terms of the temporal dimension, as well as advanced methods and creative ideas for dealing with natural resources require the concerted efforts of both architects, constructors, planners, and researchers in cooperation with decision-makers to focus on environmentally friendly technologies, especially in the field of building and construction technology. According to this vision, the paper analyzes the technical revolution in building technology from a sustainable perspective, then monitored its implications on architecture and associated urbanism, considering the promotion of sustainable architecture and the rationalization of building methods and energy consumption, to propose new pillars Building Technology Sustainablism Framework.
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Cities of the Future: Challenges and OpportunitiesPreface Cities are where ideas form, where innovation glows, and where economic growth largely flourishes. They are where most people live and where significant risks can emerge as well as where challenges can be magnified. In the age of urban digitization, new and complex issues are emerging, and today's cities are likely on the cusp of the largest global social and economic transformation. Facing the pressing challenges of the unprecedented rates of urban expansions, it becomes inevitable to adopt a shared responsibility to create healthier, more accessible, and intelligent cities to better use human resources, promote needs and capacities, and advance a decent quality of life. Considering the fact that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is currently witnessing rapid growing urbanization due to demographic, social, and economic growth in the country that increased the number of cities. In addition to the current implementation of the Future Saudi Cities Program in line with the 2030 Saudi Arabia's vision and the National Transformation Program. The 6th Annual Memaryat International Conference (MIC 2022) seeks to address the key challenges and opportunities of "future cities" to embrace novel approaches and grounded technologies in pursuing a vision for smart, inclusive cities. This volume contains papers presented at the 6th Annual Memaryat International Conference (MIC 2022). While the key objective of MIC is to build bridges between science, technology, and innovation, the 2022 MIC focused on cities of the future, whereby cities appear to be in a state of continuous expansion; their population growth has historically occurred in cycles. Innovations have generally addressed the challenges posed by rising populations, only to be replaced by new hurdles. The thrust of the discussion in the proceedings is formed by multiple areas addressing challenges and opportunities of the future cities at the local, national, and international levels and how these challenges can hinder the development objectives planned to be achieved by the cities of the future. Accordingly, the papers included in this volume revolve around three sections: The first section discusses the future of the Saudi cities and addresses different aspects and dimensions of the future cities at the local, national, and international levels. The papers also tackled critical challenges facing the current cities and how these challenges can hinder the development objective planned to be achieved by the cities of the future. The focus of the papers varied from managing a handling food in cities of tomorrow, cities and tourism, intelligent cities of the future, problems of efficient exploitation of land in cities, and maintaining a city's identity in the cities of the future. The second section revolves around smart, inclusive, and livable cities. Few papers tackled the role the social dimension can play in future cities. Future cities are not only places where smart technologies, advanced communication, and creativity meet but also cities that facilitate spaces and venues which can contribute to the residents' quality of life and social cohesion. Investigating the social dimension in future cities was the core of many presentations. Sense of community, safety, physical health and wellbeing, and economic activities are all aspects that proved to be significant to the planning and design of our future cities. Future cities are also characterized by workforce development, which helps bridge skill mismatches and gaps between the job opportunities and local workers, linking the domestic workforce and the economic development with high-impact and well-suited workforce training and development services. The third section discusses environmental issues and smart solutions for future cities recognizing the benefits of a green approach to urban planning and design and the potential to lower urban temperatures, mitigate air pollution and build natural environmental resilience. Sustainability experts predict carbon-neutral cities full of electric vehicles and bike-sharing schemes, with improved air quality. The Editors hope that the selected papers for this volume will lead to a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities of future cities. Viewed in this way, this volume is intended to promote research in the domains of architecture, urban design, and urban planning.
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Sick Neighborhood Syndromes in Hot Dry ClimateThe neighborhood has become the focus of attraction of urban planners, designers and architects. Over the last two decades, the field of study of the neighborhood and its relationship with health has witnessed an explosion of interest. Several researchers investigated neighborhood problems and its impacts on well-being. Different urban problems vary in mental and physical health impacts. A lot of longitudinal and cross-sectional research linked the characteristic of neighborhood whether physical or social to the health condition of the community. Furthermore, heart disease, skin disorder, cancer diabetes, depression and drug use are some of the health problems that an individual might face while living in an insufficient neighborhood particularly in harsh climate conditions. In desert climate, thermal low performance can lead to urban problems such as the well-known phenomenon “Urban Heat Island (UHI)”. The later can lead to several illness syndromes for residents. Reviewing the literature revealed a gap in the knowledge on the detailed relationship between the urban design elements and the sick health syndrome. This paper discusses the negative impact of the neighborhood design elements and its interconnection with illness syndromes. Similar to the Sick Building Syndrome (SBS), the paper introduces a new term to define the relationship between the urban design elements and the sick health syndromes which is “Sick Neighborhood Syndrome” (SNS).
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Promoting Social Interaction Through Jeddah’s Neighborhood Parks DesignThis research examines the design attributes with potential impact on social interactions in neighborhood parks. This includes accessibility, plants, maintenance, shading devices, lighting, walking paths, active and passive activities, seating, as well as water elements. It develops a theoretical framework of the neighborhood park design that promotes social interaction for assessing neighborhood park design and the level of social interaction in this park within the context of Jeddah city, KSA. It adopts the case study approach to investigate one study site in Jeddah city. It uses an array of qualitative strategies for data collection to test the validity of the theoretical framework in actual context including self-directed/closed-ended questionnaires, direct observation, and physical documentation. In addition to this, a non-participative, structured observation method will be used to record basic data about the level of social interaction in the selected case study. The main findings of this research contribute to generating design guidelines for neighborhood parks within the urban context of Jeddah City in Saudi Arabia to promote social interaction.
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Investigating the Effect of Urban Form on Heat Island Phenomena: Case Study of Jeddah, KSAThis study is to debate urban forms embraces urban heat island adaptation and mitigation actions. It also aims to investigate the effect of urban design impacts, to develop strategies for reducing urban heat island influences with a good preparation for climate change adaptation, and to contribute in improving quality of urban life. In order to achieve the objectives of this study, the scientific methodology was used due to its suitability to the nature of the research, which depends mainly on three stages; record facts from the field build a preliminary theory from the literature review, and experimental situations. Several approaches have been used: data collection, literature review, preparation through data bases, probability analysis using SPSS program, and Space Syntax analysis. The study investigates two districts in Jeddah which are Al-Balad and Al-Basateen. The results show differences in temperature between the two districts at the same time schedule. The factors impacting this urban heat island’s result were attributed to different urban fabric between the two districts. The study recommends decreasing urban heat island by using robust structures, increasing the use of plants in design, and implementing an effective urban design. Design Strategy Properties of urban materials, particularly, solar, reflectance, thermal emissivity and heat capacity, also influence the development of urban heat island as they determine how the suns energy is reflected, emitted, and absorbed. The contribution of this study is the formulation of asset of strategies and principles that can help directing designers to transform these defunct downtowns into sustainable urban cores for people to live, work, play and visit.
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The dynamic relationship among technological innovation, international trade, and energy productionThe primary objective of this study is to analyze the dynamic association among the green energy production (GEP), green technological innovation (GTI), and green international trade (GIT). This study uses fully modified least square (FMOLS) and dynamic least square (DOLS) for data analysis. This study uses the panel data set starts from 2000 to 2020 for eight south Asian countries. This study find a negative relationship between GEP and EFP. However, green technological innovation and green international trade have positive significant association. This study recommends several policy implications regarding the economies of south Asia (SA) based on empirical findings: to subsidize the industries for the installation of renewable projects for the production of renewable energies.
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Methodology to Improve Energy Efficiency of Heritage Buildings Using HBIM-Sabil Qaitbay: A Case Study from EgyptOver the last few decades, reducing energy consumption in existing buildings became vital. Although architectural heritage values do not allow typical retrofit interventions, research and practice have demonstrated that heritage buildings can be energy efficient without compromising the building’s heritage values. This article shows the results of energy analysis performed on heritage buildings with HBIM-based simulations such as Revit, Insight, and Green Building Studio. These tools were used to study the energy performance and thermal comfort of Sabil Qaitbay in Cairo, a heritage building built in the fifteenth century, and it is currently used as a library and school for cinema and television. The building history and the conservation values of the current project were studied. Then, the methodology to improve the energy efficiency of heritage buildings using HBIM was discussed. Moreover, two proposals were applied to the current base case, and the potential energy saving for each proposed intervention was investigated. The simulation confirmed a possible reduction of 18.7% in energy consumption with the lowest-cost interventions and 33% with the highest-cost interventions.
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Lessons from the Past to Enhance the Environmental Performance of Primary School Classrooms in EgyptThe achievement of adequate internal environment quality (IEQ) – as one of the most important aspects of quality of life - lies at the core of every debate about built environment of school buildings. Many attempts have been made in the past to examine different aspects of the internal environment quality of primary classrooms. Unhealthy classrooms with poor environmental quality were found to lead to absenteeism among staff and pupils, and negatively affect the performance of children, schoolwork as well as the education process. Children are more susceptible than adults to the effect of poor internal environment quality, which can be “subtle and do not always produce easily recognizable impacts on health and wellbeing”. Egyptian schools are no exception. The author of the current research believes that the environmental performance of these schools could be better by adopting passive strategies and measures. The current paper presents and analysis three examples of the contemporary schools thought to be climatically and environmentally responsive. Their environmental performances are analyzed in order to adopt useful ideas and measures to deal with the hot dry climate in Egypt. The precedents are chosen from the hot dray region and the semi-arid zones according to the Koppen Climatic Classification. Hourly climatic data of their locations are synthesized Using Meteonorm1 software and analyzed using Weather Tool2 to investigate the response of the school design to the climate context. Results suggest a number of useful passive measures that could be applied on the Egyptian schools in order to enhance their environmental performance.
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Transformable Architecture, A key to Improve stadiums & sports buildings.Nowadays, needs are changing rapidly. New technologies are developed to achieve responsive architecture trends to these changes. One of these trends is called Transformable Architecture. Transformable architecture is listed under the kinetic architecture. It is defined as buildings – in a fixed place - that can change its form, configuration and properties, for a need or a purpose. Its applications are varied from moving the roof structure, building spaces, façade components and interior components and furnishing. Roof structure can be moved by different ways, by moving roof parts; like overlapping, or by transforming roof structure; like retraction or deploying. By such, transformable architecture introduces a lot of solutions, which can improve the buildings' functional, environmental, aesthetic and economic properties. Functional properties, as making the building alters its function to another, change its form and configuration to host another event. Environmental properties, that makes the building able to host events throughout the year and making it energy efficient. Aesthetic properties, -which caused by motion – as it makes the building attractive with appropriate visual impact. As a result, the economic properties of the building are improved. So, there is no need to construct very expensive wide span buildings for each game. Particularly, in large crowded cities like Cairo (the capital city of Egypt), where there is no enough free area for such activities. Also, there is an ability to increase income by multi-use, energy efficiency, and tourism attraction. Hence, transformable architecture is a key to improve stadiums and sports buildings, and in turn improve its functional, environmental, aesthetic and economic properties. This paper tries to highlight the role of transformable architecture in stadiums and show the importance of improving stadium abilities and properties. This is done through review the literature and analyses a number of case studies in order to investigate the different impacts of employing this technique in their buildings. A number of recommendations on using such technique in Egyptian stadiums and sports buildings are drawn as key directions to improve them.
