Development and use of traditional patterns for design in hot arid zones

Abstract

In spite of the hard conditions of the desert, the architectural pattern of its traditional buildings was designed on the basis of broad experience and knowledge in responding to such conditions. Through the compact connection of a group of design methods, it managed to act in a unit system of hundreds of buildings as a pattern similar to a single house. The overall construction is still a proof of the level of the thermal convenience that was achieved by the traditional pattern as a result of conducting a group of design methods in order to create the environmental convenience. Also in spite of being in an undeveloped area for hundreds of years, it contains architectural design ideas for environmental mitigations with a high scientific level, which emphasizes the uniqueness of traditional desert architecture in the hot arid regions. The case study of this thesis is the old Libyan city of Gadames that is located in the hot arid region of the desert. Depending on a special construction pattern, the environmental buildings of this city were adapted to be suitable for the climate and social conditions of the desert inhabitants. The residential buildings were multi-storey and interacted, which eased to a great extent to reduce the direct and indirect thermal effects by creating shadows in the roads and isolating the horizontal and vertical temperature using design methods that depend on the introversion of the building in order to create a balanced thermal mass. This design made it possible to protect the general and private spaces inside the complex mass from the outer climatic conditions, which increased the ability of thermal storage for buildings group and supported the physical characteristics of the different construction materials. From another point of view, the multi storey buildings and the unified ventilating system, using road spaces and -different house mopenings, eased to reduce the effect of the wide range of temperatures between day and night to a convenient average. The design location of the kitchen on the roof enabled the usage of this area mainly by women, which in turn greatly served the social requirements from the aspect of privacy. In addition, the strong social relationship among the desert -society members widely helped in creating compact masses, which are environmentally suitable for this climate. The distribution of spaces and the interior design of different elements, from the aspects of design and finishing, played a positive role in supporting the level of thermal convenience. The dependence on semi-closed interior courtyards provided suitable natural lighting for the inner spaces and created a ventilating system among these spaces and the road (Openings making use of the difference in pressure between the cold air inside and the hot air outside, and this reduced the thermal gain. The choice of colors and the method of finishing using low emissivity colors, with forms that express the local culture, had a significant effect in adding beauty to the functional elements and in creating an interior microclimate isolated from the climatic conditions outside the desert residential complex. Through the above mentioned description of the most important characteristics of the traditional construction pattern in the desert, this thesis studies the possibility of extracting the basic design ideas of the traditional pattern, and developing them by using the modern techniques by maintaining the traditional design characteristics in creating thermally convenient, socially accepted and approved, and economically suitable spaces. The design proposals in the thesis, which depend on design mitigation methods using traditional pattern and local construction materials, achieved several factors that are considered as the basics for creating the thermal convenience. In addition to the creation of shadows, ventilation, natural illumination, and a thermally balanced mass, the proposed design also suitably maintained the privacy aspect as well as it provided sufficient area to practice activities in each space. IVThe members' patterns and design methods that are dealed in this thesis as a design proposal for the complex houses, has good ability in environmental mitigation, it can be designed in different architectural models, and its material quality is vulnerable to continuous development. This is considered as a humble step towards developing the pattern of the local architectural identity and maintaining its special architectural style.