Cubic Houses

/0 Comments/in /by

The square emerges as an exceptionally efficient and economical use of space in a world where furniture and building materials commonly feature 90-degree angles. Rooms with non-rectangular corners can pose challenges in terms of functionality. Moreover, beyond efficiency, square houses offer greater flexibility in terms of building orientation, allowing for arrangement around both the X and Y axes, providing versatility in capturing desired breezes and lights. It’s important to note that while square houses may not offer the same visual interest as more complex shapes, the emphasis here is on practical efficiency and effective space utilization rather than purely aesthetic considerations.

Speaking energetically, the most universally efficient shape would be a hemisphere. The dome, with its curved form, is ideal for conserving energy, while the flat section below, in contact with the earth, serves as a perfect insulator, reminiscent of igloos. However, living in such a house poses challenges since most furniture would need to be custom-made, leading to potential space wastage. Additionally, the construction process would be intricate, which explains why rectangular buildings are more prevalent.

The cubic shape simplifies the construction process compared to more complex architectural designs. The straightforward geometry of cubes requires fewer intricate structural elements and may involve less labor-intensive construction techniques. This simplicity can contribute to a more efficient building process, potentially reducing construction time and labor costs. Cubic designs often involve a more efficient use of building materials. The regular shape allows for standardized construction components, minimizing material waste. This optimization can lead to cost savings in both material acquisition and waste disposal.

The flat roof often associated with cubic designs provides a practical and cost-effective surface for solar panel installation and better drainage. A square-shaped roof can efficiently direct rainwater outside, unlike roofs with intricate designs that may have vulnerabilities and complexities in water drainage. Harnessing solar energy can significantly reduce electricity costs over the long term, contributing to the overall economic efficiency of the structure. When the floor plan is square, and the house volume is cubic, architects, engineers, builders, plumbers, and other professionals always have a mental framework with a square proportion in mind. This mental framework not only determines the positioning of elements at each stage of design and construction but also fosters coordination among all stakeholders.

Concerning living space and furniture, the most efficient shape would be a cube. It is energetically efficient, allows for standard means of furniture production, and maintains a comfortable ratio of free space to used space. Moreover, construction is straightforward, whether using reinforced concrete, metal, wood, or any kind of vernacular techniques. Cubic and rectangular shapes excel in cross-ventilation, with ample articulation for shading, providing a harmonious blend of energy efficiency and practical design.

Choosing a square or cubic model before examining the land’s position and the topography of the area can lead to its lack of harmony with the surrounding space. This can result in generalization, as every location has its specifics and its own problems to solve. In respect to energy efficiency, a dome or sphere has the least surface area for volume, making it the most energy-efficient. It is also very earthquake-resistant and hurricane-proof when made of insulated concrete. Perfectly rectangular houses can be perceived as boring and may be challenging to fit ideal-sized rooms into without wasting space. Long straight walls are less strong than walls that zig and zag a bit because the corners add strength, especially important in the foundation.

Central Courtyard House

/0 Comments/in /by

The courtyard house makes its first appearance ca. 6400–6000 BC (calibrated), in the Neolithic Yarmukian site at Sha’ar HaGolan, in the central Jordan Valley, on the northern bank of the Yarmouk River, giving the site a special significance in architectural history. In Ancient Roman architecture courtyard houses were built around an atrium. Courtyard houses are also common in Islamic architecture. Throughout history the courtyard house has played a major role, and only in the last couple of centuries has its use been neglected. Recently, more attention has been given to the courtyard house, as a type to solve a number of problems of dense inner city housing.

Whether viewed as space, building, or landscape, courtyard housing provided both concrete and symbolic references to the idea of shared life motivated by concerns higher than the pursuit of mere survival. In areas with vast dry spaces, the single-family house, as it floated in a continuous flat or undulating landscape, seemed incapable of defining such a community in form. The idea of place in this type of dwelling, is achieved by the exclusion of the surrounding context and by the definition of a protected interior realm that nurtures and safeguards private or limited shared values. The idea of enclosure becomes instrumental in the negation of exterior disorder and in the definition of the courtyard as a tool of collective identity. At all times, one registers the total building and not merely the sum of its parts, thereby compensating for lack of identity at smaller scale.

The dominant Iranian multifamily dwelling type was the low-rise, high-density courtyard building. There existed a multiplicity of such buildings bound to similarity by the exigencies of the type, but displayed a variety of specific solutions brought about by contextual, stylistic, programmatic, and other forces. The earliest and most numerous examples of courtyard housing are simple repetitions of the single-family house arranged in series. The salient architectural rules of this typology, as usual, were based on the pragmatics of construction, development, and user expectations. They were actually so obvious and explicit that most courts were built, not by architects, but by the people themselves, without reference to standards texts or the consciousness on commonly held values. When a building type is accepted not only as a means of organizing space and form, but also as a means of construction, then it enters with particular force into the realm of the builder.

As these locations shifted to accommodate an upper-class clientele, however, architects became increasingly involved in their design. They combine the advantages of compact, easily maintained living quarters with the provision of communal outdoor places for public contact. Single or multi family houses capitalized on the use of exterior space before the courts, and thus provided a tradition on which the courts could build. Porches, patios, balconies, and various other house extensions all became standard way to amplify interior spaces. Planting in private spaces became a developed art and contributed to the overall ambience of the court. High living-room ceilings and cross ventilation became standard way to offset the effects of dry, hot days and cool nights. The possibility of living indoors or outdoors under pleasant conditions, in natural surroundings, without being preoccupied about the weather and its effects, heightened the sense of well-being inherent in court living.

Central Courtyard House Features

The essence of the court house lies in the definition of an interior landscaped realm, separated from the street. This outdoor place is used in the summer as an extension of ground floor living room and is typically furnished with indoor furniture. Occasionally it is covered by a canvas canopy. This extension, provides both access and a realm for public activity. The courtyard and the surfaces that enclose it, constitute a precise attempt to recreate a street scene with all its variety of formal definition and accommodation of disparate activity. Some features that central courtyard dwellings have, or must comply with, are as follows:

  • Its plan shape is typically rectangular;
  • The courtyard always insistently expresses the imagery of the communal living room;
  • The width of the courtyard, its relationship to the dwellings, and its connection to the city beyond, determine whether it is used as contemplative place or merely as a route for pedestrian circulation;
  • Its ground is carefully divided into hard and soft landscaping in order to direct movement, to screen dwellings, or merely to embellish;
  • The regularity of entrances, the continuous surface, the repetitiveness of architectural elements, and the quality of the streetscape combine to provide a fine illusion of the organizational and expressive possibilities of the courtyard as place;
  • There is direct access from all dwellings, whether ground or upper level, to the court;
  • The passage from court to buildings, or from level to level is always articulated as portico, porch, front yard, or stair;
  • Within the limited space of the court, building elements express or generate specific realms of activity or experience;
  • Size differences aside, all units, whether attached or detached, consciously attempt to duplicate the amenities of the detached single-family house;
  • The internal structure of the dwellings is dominated by the rules of access. These means of access are rigidly defined in spatial terms;
  • The court is separated from street by an iron gate, a door, or a portico.

Integrating the Cars in Central Courtyard Houses

Court should integrate the car, without allowing it to tyrannize the dwelling. This accommodation is quite a radical departure in the history of residential building, and it reflects the unique admiration, acceptance, and love of automobiles that has characterized the modern culture influences. Parking garages could occur:

  • In the rear, with side service driveway;
  • Directly off the street on sloping sides;
  • Hollowed out under the central courtyard.

I these ways, the automobile is incorporated into the complex without intruding upon open space.

Courtyard House Types

The Single-Bar Parti

The initial formulation of the courtyard as place in none other than the street.

The Double-bar Parti

The double-bar parti is a rare one, because it needs a powerful identity to convey uniqueness of a space. Sloping sites permit sensitive articulations of the domain of the individual dwellings. With the unavailability for access and parking can transform it to  cul-de-sac street.

The L Parti

The L parti is the first which begins to define the enclosure of the courtyard by means of the building form. Especially when located on a sloping site, such courts suffer from a weak overall definition of the central courtyard.

The U Parti

Court of this kind are surrounded on three sides by buildings and most typically are located with their open end facilitating the street. The front of court at street is could be completed with a thin wall screen connecting the two front bars of the U, so the definition of the court become powerful. In situation of generous land, the bars of the U could turn at the end as if to suggest the ultimate act of enclosure. Accommodation of cars in this type is very easy. In cases of uphill courts, the cars could be nestled underneath the first terrace.

The Completed Courtyard Parti

The completed courtyard parti is the most accomplished realization of the court typology. Here the city in all its manifestations definitely excluded. This parti is strong enough to accept access from two sides, and still retain the integrity of the central space. Typically, the central space is a regular grid, a rectangle or square, dimensioned in such a way as to accept a fountain, garden or a pool in its center. The courtyard always insistently expresses the imagery of the communal living room. When building distorted by topography, the differences in level should taken up as an architectural element in the courtyard and be hidden in the body of the building itself. Their neutral exteriors, left urban spaces for the benefit of vehicles and representing some kind of stiff, formal public behavior, while behind the walls of the courts lurk all the forbidden temptations to act privately and freely.

Multi/Special Parti

The completed courtyard parti could multiplied or distorted by unique contextual conditions. Such cases offer the best illustration of the capability of courtyard house to adapting to the urban or site structure. Where two kind of spaces exist as separate domains, it can generates substantial variety of places and multiplies the possibilities of diverse experiences within the buildings. These spaces can  organized without a defined center, but all flowing into each other. The seeming irregularity of projecting building volumes and empty spaces, aim to contextual responsiveness, may generate and developed with discipline of form and structure the nostalgic sense of villages. The possibility of relating units to mini-courts within a single building, heightened the sense of identity of the inhabitants and generates a diversity of accommodation which is amazing if one considers the limits of land and building mass available.

Disappearance of Courtyard House

Decline and disappearance of Courtyard House as a vital element of urban morphology is due to a fundamental shift both in the principle of production and in the life possibilities associated with the single dwelling in the context of housing.

Building Underground

/0 Comments/in /by

Studies show that underground-shelters are more cost-efficient in climates that have significant temperature fluctuation and low humidity, like central and eastern regions in Iran. Earth temperatures vary much less than air temperatures in these areas, which means the earth can absorb extra heat from the house in hot hours or insulate the house to maintain warmth in cold nights. Given the huge numbers of people through time, who have lived in housing which was partially or completely underground, and the serious advantages of being below the Earth’s surface in arid zones, it is strange that nowadays, this pattern do not follow in Iran. The reasons are all social or cultural, not costs or lack of comfort. Although initial cost MAY be higher, depending upon the site and soil, but all costs of ownership and maintenance are much lower in the long run. Building underground seem problematic, because contractors and local housing authorities have little or no experience with the structures. Another reason it has become unfashionable is the perception, based upon poor basements, that underground housing is cold, wet and dark; none of which needs to be true.

There are tens of thousands of people who live underground today, throughout the globe, many in caves or dwellings constructed hundreds or thousands of years ago. More than half the people of Coober Pedy, an opal mining town in the center of the South Australian desert, live underground to survive the scorching summer heat and freezing winters. Their homes that built into caves, hills and old mine shafts, stay at a pleasant 23 degrees Celsius all year round. The interest in underground housing has been increasing since the 1970’s in US due to rapidly increasing energy costs, and social movements in 70s.

Design and construction to prevent long term moisture/dampness issues would be the big one, along with structural support of tons of soil pressure pushing down and sideways, ensuring adequate cross flow ventilation, ensuring sufficient daylight access to all habitable spaces, ensuring an alternative emergency egress route from all habitable spaces, and having a sufficient visual indoor-outdoor connection for psychological wellbeing and amenity. Cost is also going to looms very large, as the techniques that builders can use above ground to keep cost down will largely not apply underground (a little easier if you can build the house first then bury it afterwards).

The main problems that we face in underground housing can be classified in:

  • The problem of construction
  • The problem of water infiltration and humidity
  • The problem of different substratum layers
  • The problem of lighting
  • The problem of ventilation

 

The problem of construction

Because it is frequently difficult to repair poor or badly designed features underground, it is vital that both design and construction is as good as possible. It depends on ground conditions. It depends on what the groundwater conditions are like. It depends on how deep we want to go. It depends on how big a house we want. It depends on how many modern conveniences we have in mind. Humidity levels may increase in earth-sheltered houses during the winter, which can cause condensation on the interior walls. Installing insulation on the outside of the walls will prevent the walls from cooling down to earth temperature, but can also reduce the summer cooling effect of the walls. Careful planning by a designer familiar with earth-sheltered home design can keep humidity from becoming a problem. There is a lot of excavation, retaining walls, and underground waterproofing that needs to be done. This is very specialist work, and it needs to be done well in order for it to be reliable. Basically, it’s masonry and concrete construction, and fairly heavyweight at that. In cold climates you need to get the insulation right as well, although to an extent, the earth itself will provide some insulation. It also needed to be ensured that the ventilation strategy is effective, otherwise we get condensation. This can be much more difficult to manage in an underground house because generally there aren’t as many windows. So, if we wanted to build underground and hit rock, the cost would get way high. Septic system will probably require a sewage pump to lift any waste to or near the surface to channel into a public system or a septic tank/drainage field system. Probably less expensive than stick built due to no siding, windows or roof. There are special problems too: Plumbing and waste removal will be unconventional, it need a custom system for ventilation and DEHUMIDICATION to include reheat. Without this we will have high humidity which will be an unhealthy condition and can promote mold growth.

The first consideration is location. Going underground is a choice that heavily depend on the location. Site selection is critical to the costs and construction. Site’s topography and microclimate determine how easily the volume can be dig out, and the walls can be surrounded with earth. A modest slope property requires more excavation than a steep one, and a flat site is the most demanding, needing extensive excavation. A south-facing slope in a region with moderate to long winters is ideal for an earth-sheltered building. South-facing windows can let in sunlight for direct heating, while the rest of the house is set back into the slope. In regions with mild winters and hot summers, a north-facing slope might be ideal.

If the land is on a hillside, one wall can be exposed and the rest of them underground; that’s a lot of benefits. The roof, walls and floors would have to be waterproof. HVAC would be considerably smaller and less expensive to run, depending on how much soil will protecting the walls. On a hill, the utilities, including water, sewer, electric could come through the exposed side. In general, an underground house on level ground will be much more expensive. On a hillside, though, with the right design and careful planning, we can get most of the benefits with few of the problems.

The type of soil at the site is another critical consideration. Granular soils such as sand and gravel are best for earth sheltering. These soils compact well for bearing the weight of the construction materials and are very permeable, allowing water to drain quickly. The poorest soils are cohesive, like clay, which may expand when wet and has poor permeability. The groundwater level at the building site is also important. Natural drainage away from the building is the best way to avoid water pressure against underground walls, but installed drainage systems can be used to draw water away from the structure.

The construction materials for each earth-sheltered structure will vary depending on characteristics of the site and the type of design. Materials must, however, provide a good surface for waterproofing and insulation to withstand the pressure and moisture of the surrounding ground.

Concrete is the most common choice for constructing underground buildings, because it strong, durable, and fire resistant. Concrete masonry units (also called concrete blocks) reinforced with steel bars placed in the core of the masonry can also be used, and generally cost less than cast-in-situ concrete.

Wood can be used in earth-sheltered construction for both interior and light structural work. Steel can used for beams, bar joists, columns, and concrete reinforcement, but must be protected against corrosion if it is exposed to the elements or to groundwater. It is also expensive, so it must be used efficiently to be economical as a structural material.

The problem of water infiltration and humidity

Waterproofing can be a challenge in earth-sheltered construction. Keep in mind these three ways to reduce the risk of water damage in your house: choose the site carefully, plan the drainage both at and below the surface of the house, and waterproof your house.

The problem of ventilation

Adequate ventilation must be carefully planned in an earth-sheltered house. Combustion appliances should be sealed combustion units that have a direct source of outside air for combustion and vent combustion gases directly to the outside.

 

Narrow Houses
/0 Comments/in /by

The design of narrow dwellings has been the subject of my research for several decades. The term narrow-front is typically used to describe dwellings whose street-facing exteriors measure 25 feet (6 meters) or less; they can be constructed in a detached, semidetached, or attached form. Also known as terraced homes, townhouses, or shotgun dwellings, they have been constructed throughout history on several continents and have maintained their appeal by offering privacy and green yards, even in compact configurations. Built in high densities, they help:

  • halt urban sprawl;
  • reduce the amount of construction material;
  • and improve energy efficiency once occupied.

Recent societal changes have brought about renewed interest in narrow houses among architects, town planners, and housing officials. This building type, which dates back two millenia, offers relevant solutions to contemporary challenges. Chief among them is the need to adopt sustainable approaches to the planning of neighborhoods and houses.

Read more