مطالب

Unsustainable growth of cities and creation a set of contiguous impervious surfaces have result on disorder of natural cycle of water in urban environments. This situation causes flooding and problems due it, pollution of groundwater resources and degrade the quality of the urban landscape by increase the speed, volume and frequency period of runoffs. conventional methods about the stormwater management have failed to demonstrate their effectiveness in this field. Thus, in recent years a new topic are created in the field of urban design that known as "water sensitive urban design". Water Sensitive Urban Design (short: WSUD) is the interdisciplinary cooperation of water management, infrastructer engineering, urban design, and landscape designing. WSUD develops integrative strategies for ecological, economical, social, and cultural sustainability. The purpose of Water Sensitive Urban Design is to combine the demands of sustainable stormwater management with the demands of urban designing, and thus bringing the urban water cycle closer to a natural one. This approach attempts to increase urban sustainability indicators, improve the quality of urban landscape and urban space amenities by offer operational mechanisms in relation to urban design and it attempts not only to close the urban water cycle in its natural cycle and achieve technical goals, but gain optimal utilization of runoff and change the vision of the issue from a threat to a valuable opportunity.The following is a description of some essential methods for sustainable stormwater management. These methods are grouped according to their primary function: water reuse, treatment, detention and infiltration, conveyance, and evapotranspiration. Here is the techniques of water sensitive urban design about stormwater management and link them to urban design concepts, till through that some methods to be introduced that they are more efficient than conventional stormwater management methods about performance, helping to complete the natural cycle of water, environmental sustainability of cities and urban design aspects.

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.

The role of EFL lecturers’ first language (L1) in the EFL courses has been an ongoing debate. A monolingual approach to EFL suggests that the use of the target language solely in foreign language (FL) classroom improves learning of the target language. Accordingly, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the attitude of Iranian lecturers and EFL learners towards using L1 as a scaffolding tool in reading comprehension. As such, a mixed method design was employed and the data were collected from a sample of 80 Iranian EFL students and 15 lecturers. The quantitative data were collected through two questionnaires and the qualitative data were gathered using a semi-structured interview guided by the research objectives. The findings revealed that the participants perceived the use of L1 (Persian) as a scaffolding tool in their EFL classrooms and it was used to serve a number of purposes: to explain complex grammar, to translate new words, to define concepts, and to help each other in their groups. Moreover, lecturers believed that L1 helps learners’ improve EFL learners’ reading comprehension. It can be concluded that L1 can be utilized as a scaffolding strategy by learners and lecturers in facilitating their learning and it can be used as a pedagogical tool by the EFL learners to enhance their learning experiences as well as to maximize their engagement in the classroom.