A large proportion of traditional Australian homes contained timber floors and timber exterior cladding until the advent of the standard concrete slab/brick veneer house. Up to 95% of new homes are built by project home companies and the majority of these contain an external envelope consisting of concrete flooring, clay brick walls and concrete tile or steel sheet roofing. This design is currently driven by consumer’s expectation of low cost, durable homes that are completed within restricted time limits. There is now a price premium on bespoke housing projects that differ materially or otherwise from a limited set of designs offered by project home firms. The adoption of concrete and brick homes originated from a perceived advantage of longevity, low maintenance and thermal comfort. Innovation in wood treatments, wood protection and insulation has provided solutions to these issues so that timber is now a viable option with added benefits such as environmental sustainability and erection speed. Australian consumers have a growing awareness and desire to live in a way that is sustainable and are making choices that reflect this attitude. This has been demonstrated through the high adoption rate of recent government-supported schemes such as subsidized insulation and solar panel installation. This paper aims at investigating homeowner’s perception of timber as a sustainable building product, the desire of homeowners to use sustainable building products, and the willingness of homeowners to pay a premium to live sustainably. This paper highlights Australian homeowners reluctance to use the most sustainable building materials even when they are willing to pay for a more environmentally sustainable home. This paper presents the results of a questionnaire survey to homeowners in the city of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia and some strategies on how to increase the use of timber in new housing projects in Australia. © 2013 IAHS.
Global solar radiation on horizontal surface is often the only radiation registered data available for a specific location. In this paper, values of solar irradiation are estimated and then compared to measured values, on a vertical south-facing surface, in Covilhà, Portugal using 14 different (kt, kd) correlation models. A very acceptable agreement between estimated and measured values is achieved. © 2013 IAHS.
Over 100,000 houses were built following the devastation caused by the Tsunami of December 26, 2004. Here the authors investigated thermal comfort in housing built in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, following the widespread destruction of buildings and compared it with undamaged existing houses and a traditional Acehnese house. The study is based on a field survey, questionnaires, and performance simulations. The findings show no significant difference between the post-tsunami housing and the unaffected existing housing, except traditional Acehnese houses which generally performed better. © 2013 IAHS.
Sustainability concept that particularly mentions a ‘futurity’ is defined as ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ in ‘Our Common Future’ (Brundtland Report) in 1987. [1] Concept of ecology was and still is being evaluated with the change of environmental problems, political, economic and social attitudes. Before the industrialization, for the societies living within the nature, environmental consciousness was within the daily life. Environmentalism emerged being against to mechanization and focused on nature-centered view instead of human-centered view after industrialization. If the action of architecture is interpreted as ‘to build’, from the deep ecologists’ perspective to interfere to the earth (to build) is an anti-ecological action. On this paper, based on the intersection of ecological sustainability and architecture, basically the circumstances that are merged when the concept of ecological sustainability encounters with the discipline of architecture which is defined as an anti-ecologic activity by deep-ecologists’ point of view will be discussed; the transformation of the concept of ecology throughout years will be summarized and the e volution of ecologic architecture will be displayed. The reflections of ecological discourse on the architecture which is defined as an anti-ecological act and the architectural approaches developed by ecological objectives will be discussed. © 2013 IAHS.
Building in traditional existing context has always presented a serious challenge, raising critical questions on how new designs should interact with the context. Some theories are claiming that interaction is achieved by relating the new buildings to older buildings’ aesthetics and replicating the old style. Other theories are declaring that a new design should respond to its own period of time since architecture always represents its time. Old historical contexts are characterized by high level of mixed uses, and residential use is the highest. Therefore the cooperation and agreement of local community seems to be essential in each infill design case, in order to understand local communities’ culture and needs, and thus aesthetics dilemma becomes a problem to be related to community not just keep it exclusive to designers and theorists. The current paper critically studies the guidelines and design criteria commonly applied to infill design in urban conservation areas by specialized control agencies and centers. It intends to assess the relation between these guidelines and. laypersons’ response and preferences especially that many actors are involved in infill issues related to special historical contexts starting from local communities, control agencies, intellectuals to professionals and designers. Most of the guidelines’ lists focus on the formal aesthetics of the environments and its physical qualities, especially visual and spatial qualities. The paper critically reviews the necessity of focusing on the content of the environment form and the way lay persons see it and relate to it, by having a comprehensive design brief specific to the site of infill, the brief has common key physical and formal guidelines to preserve area character and ways to include local community in design decisions in order to relate to community preferences, values and needs. The paper stresses the idea that including the community in the design brief helps the infill project to be deeply related to the context and the local community, thus increasing its chances of success. The paper deploys an Egyptian infill experience carried out by Agha Khan Trust of Culture (AKTC) in Al Darb Al Ahmar-Aslam neighborhood-a historical residential area in Islamic Cairo, assessing the processes followed by AKTC to include the community in the infill design process, and whether the results succeeded in meeting community preferences, values and needs. © 2013 IAHS.
