درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The use of building regulations in architectural design has been a controversial issue for a long time. From the view point of critics, building regulations inhibit innovation, promote conservative design and are incapable of insuring design quality. From the defenders point of view, some professional mentalities of architects regarding building regulations are problematical and must be changed. The present research aims to illuminate the reasons for the above-mentioned tension between architectural design and building regulations. This is done by examining the structural match between architectural design and building regulations. Seeing from a designer point of view, the paper compares formal characteristics of building regulations with architectural design. Three general characteristics of building regulations are found in contrast to characteristics of architectural design. Building regulations are analytical in nature, while architectural design is a synthesis-oriented act. Building regulations are mainly based on a reductionist approach towards defining design problems and solutions, while innovation and originality are considered as fundamental values by most architects. And thirdly, building regulations are usually framed in a way that matches an evaluative mode of thought, while architects often have to work in a generative and predictive mode. These explain why architects from time to time feel frustrated with regulations. The paper continues to make recommendations to both architectural designers and regulators. To the designers some facts and points are stated to help them better understand the nature and performance of building regulations and guide them safely and positively use regulations in their design process. Addressing the legislators, the paper offers some recommendations to facilitate the use of building regulations in architectural design. Moving towards performance-based regulations, a broader involvement of information technology in building regulations, and production of designer-oriented guidance documents are some of these recommendations.

Community is the main pillar of the urban body; and balance of social life in cities depends on preserving communities. During the twentieth century, the idea of residential-centered community has been offered in many modern theories and has been widely accepted for solving urban various problems such as management, social and human relations, health and welfare issues and aspects of meaning and identity. On the contrary, the concept of sustainable urban development has been considered a scientific issue in all societies in recent decades, when much of the literature on urban development has been allocated to the issue. The main argument of this paper is two issues of sustainability and urban communities, as well as how to link them in a topic. The paper will describe the necessity and importance of creating sustainable communities which have been originated from the consequences of climate change. Then, the concepts of sustainability and community are clarified; and finally the components of creating a sustainable community will be exامینed.

Nowadays, enhancing the aspects of tourism industry is considering as one of the most important pillars of countries financial improvement. While urban spaces in different cities of Iran have wide verity of cultural and historical attractions which can attract considerable number of tourists to these cities, they have not meet special needs of tourists and as an obvious result these attractions could not play their key role in approaching to economical sustainability. One of the most important urban tourism attractions is historical pedestrian paths, which can have significant effect in enhancing tourists’ embracement of visiting path’s surrounded attractions if their qualities are improved. In this essay, the pedestrian paths’ qualities are introduced and "security and safety" and "readability" qualities are selected as the most important urban qualities in eliminating these paths from “must-see list” for tourist thorough analyzing questionaries’ data. Then, as the role of different urban maps (on-line, off-line and printed maps) in improving readability and safety qualities have been proved, the efficiency of these maps evaluated and their weakness and strength points investigated.