From heritage to sustainable design : focus on traditional neighborhood design in Iran. Analyzes and recommendations for sustainable design in hot and arid region. Case study : traditional and contemporary neighborhood design in Yazd, Iran

Abstract

In spite of the western countries, sustainability is a new phenomenon in Iran. In recent years architects in this country have begun to pay attention to this issue, but due to lack of sufficient research background in this area, usually the criteria and solutions of the western countries in sustainability are followed by Iranian architects and designers. Generally adaption of western patterns and styles of architecture and urban design has been a usual trend in contemporary era in Iran as a developing country. This western effect on architectural organization, forms, plans and details of the projects is clearly visible. The significant problem in terms of sustainability, resulting from following western patterns and rules in Iran appears here. Since many sustainability features belong to the local environment and climatic conditions as well as social and cultural conditions of each region, these important features are therefore missed in these imitations. It is substantial to define local and regional criteria for sustainability in city planning and architectural scale for each region by considering specific local environmental and socio-cultural characteristics. On the other hand, vernacular architecture and urbanism in regions with old history and civilization have several features that could survive over centuries. These features and patterns can be considered as some local sustainability factors and maybe they can be applied as some useful criteria for defining sustainability rules for contemporary architecture in the region. This research aims to show that definition of local criteria of sustainability is possible by using the historical features and patterns of architecture and neighborhood design, however does not claim to define an efficient rating system of sustainability for one country, while this is a quite extensive work that can be achieved through national cooperation of different researchers. Similarly sustainability is a wide concept including social, economic and environmental aspects. Due to the author's field of study, this research focuses on the environmental aspects of sustainability. So this research tries to show there are some potentials in vernacular architecture that can conduct to features and patterns of environmental sustainability. For this purpose this research tries to know and analyze those mentioned features in one of the oldest civilizations: the hot arid region of Iran. So the first aim of this research is to find out the sustainability features of Iranian historical urban design in the past and the 6 second aim is to show those features and solutions can be adapted to the modern life and be used as patterns of sustainability for the contemporary life in this region. Therefor some of the most important environmental features of the historical cities in Iran are specified. The city of Yazd as one of the most important cities in hot and arid zone of Iran is selected as the case study. Seven districts of Yazd are selected and analyzed in contribution to environmental sustainability features. In order to perform the research in a more scientific way, the case studies and their features have been tried to be evaluated by considering the criteria of an existing evaluation system for sustainability. According to lack of such sustainability evaluation system in Iran, LEED1 rating system- as one of the most worldwide well-known systems that was originally established in the United States to evaluate sustainability- is selected due to the most climatic similarities between Iran and some parts of USA. It is obvious that all of the items of LEED can-t be used for evaluation of Iranian case studies and they should be adapted to special condition of Iran. This research tries to make a combination of LEED items and some local items defined by author to define the baselines for evaluation. For better understanding of the degree of sustainability in the historical case studies, some contemporary districts are selected as well, and evaluated to be compared with the historical results. So the analyzes were made on both historical and contemporary districts of Yazd to know which part of the city is more sustainable. By evaluating both parts of the city the results will show if the historical parts of the city are more sustainable or not. If the historical districts are more sustainable, do their features have the potential to be adapted to the contemporary city? Results reveal that the historical parts of the city are in most features more sustainable than the contemporary parts. Then this research tries to apply and adapt some of those sustainable features for the contemporary city design in Yazd in form of some general recommendations. This is an empirical research and it is made by both qualitative and quantitative methods, using an inductive approach. Keywords Historical architecture and urban design, Sustainability, Evaluation, Contemporary life