rapid urban population is widely known as the main inducement of growing cities in terms of quantity and variety in form. however, the city expansion entails physical challenges and it has profound impacts on the issue of urban morphology. it raises global awareness beyond the urbanism and includes sociology, psychology, economics as well as environmental studies due to the implications of broa...

while in the historic urban fabric of iran's cities, there are numerous traditional buildings that have stood up for more than one hundred years, today's buildings, in spite of advanced construction technologies, are not comparable with those traditional ones in terms of resiliency and durability. the sustainable vernacular strategies in design and construction of these traditional ho...

there are large areas of the world where seismicity is high while they form the whole or parts of urban conglomeration. iran can be literally compared to a large shaking table; various parts of it have been stricken by earthquake in the last four decades(1). tehran is also expected to have a major earthquake in the near future(2). therefore, urban design criteria for earthquake preparedness i...

The increasing popularity of parametric design tools goes hand in hand with the use of building performance simulation (BPS) tools from the early design phase. However, current methods require a significant computational time and a high number of parameters as input, as they are based on traditional BPS tools conceived for detailed building design phase. Their application to the urban scale is ...

the complexity of today’s subject matter of urban design is to the extent that no urban designer may be able to consider all relevant issues and their interactive impacts simultaneously, and thereby make appropriate decisions. application of computer techniques has made the analysis of complex issues in urban design possible. this has been a great help for urban designers. space syntax method i...

New towns built in North Africa and the Middle East incorporate modern elements into their built environments unprecedented in the traditional city of the region. This thesis addresses the questions: Do these new built environments respond to the prevalent culture? What modern and traditional design qualities enable new towns to maintain cultural integrity? The new towns Sadat City, Egypt and Y...