مطالب

Since the quality of apartment buildings is noted, the way of increasing attachment and discovering its effective variables is challenging subjects for researchers in this field. Person, place and process (P.P.P) model of place attachment as the most precise model of them, evaluate attachment to three parts of person, place and process. What is going to be studied in this research is to evaluate attachment of residents to the open space of such buildings. Then, identifying the effective variables and suggesting practical solutions to improve quality of such environment are the subsequent goals of this research. This is practical research with correlational cases study method.used for Ekbatan and Iran Zامین apartment buildings and SPSS is used to analyze data. The findings show that in both cases, attachment is in high degree while physical and social attachment in Iranzامین apartment building is more than Ekbatan. In addition physical attachment is more than social attachment in both cases. The results show that in personal dimensions, designers should pay attention to the expectations and variety of needs for different ages of residents. In place dimensions, type of territories, accessibility, and flexibility of spaces in designing open spaces are the key points for designers. In addition, the way these types of buildings are managed is so important in the process of place attachment that shows it is needed for their managers to have some special skills to respond to the mobility character of place attachment.

 International construction companies have settled in Africa and especially Nigeria, to compete for infrastructural projects, in a bid to extend their services across their borders. The trans-border extension of the services offered by these international multi-nationals exposes them to the political risk factors pertinent with the host country. In order to survive the harsh realities of the political risk indicators operational in Nigeria, especially the north-eastern part of the country, that has been plagued with civil unrest associated with the terrorist operations of Boko haram, it has become necessary to identify and manage these risk factors, to ensure the continuous survival of international construction companies in Nigeria. This paper seeks to identify and assess the prevalence of these political risk factors influencing the corporate performance of international companies operating in the North-east of Nigeria. Data for the s tudy was collected through structured questionnaires administered to 78 expatriates project managers from 6 international construction companies in the 6 states in the North East of Nigeria. Collected data was analyzed using relative importance index and factor analysis. Findings revealed that terrorism, corruption, insurrections, sabotages and kidnapping were the top five risk factors with the highest frequency of occurrence. It was also revealed that terrorism, kidnappings, sabotages, corruption and change in government are the risk factors with the highest impact on operations in the region. It is therefore recommended for the federal, state and local Governments to provide security for lives, properties and investments, companies should do more corporate social responsibilities and purchase political risk insurance cover to minimize their losses

Our modern society is filled with stressful stimuli that impact our daily lives, and lead to problems that eventually threaten our mental and psychological wellbeing. Expanding urban life and urbanizing people's interactions have drastically increased and resulted in more stressful circumstances. Unfortunately, the role of nature and nature-based design in our urban societies as an alternative in reducing the impact of unhealthy and stressful situations produced by our modern and urbanized life style has been neglected. Considering the fact that human beings are social creatures and their surroundings affect them both mentally and psychologically; hence, the study of psychological impacts of nature and nature-based design is both essential and necessary in our fast evolving urban societies. This research investigates nature-based design and the short-term observational impacts and benefits of urban societies' interaction with nature on different aspects of human psychology including perceived restoratives’, mental health and vitality and creativity. The participants in the two sample groups observed two different urban areas. One was a building complex in Isfahan city center and the other was an urban park in Isfahan. In the end, the participants filled out a comprehensive psychological questionnaire assessing the effects environment on different dimensions of human psyche. Our results demonstrate that even short-term interaction with nature and nature-based designs had positive effects one's psychological wellbeing, and therefore, our finding show that urban designs and architecture intertwined with nature were crucial in protecting and improving human mental health and wellbeing.

The brick ornamentation in Islamic architecture represents the unique skill of the architectural artists and we have seen the perfection of this kind of art during the Seljuk period. There is little information about the process of developing brick art in the architecture of Islamic mosque in Iran, and it has not yet been dealt with as it is worthy of this precious art. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out further research in this regard due to its importance in Iranian architecture. In this research, through library studies and with a descriptive-analytical approach, the trend of development of bricks ornament in the architecture of the Islamic mosques of Iran from the beginning to the end of the Ilkhan era, as well as the causes of importance and development to the bricks of the Seljuk period were studied. The brickwork decoration in the Islamic architecture of Iran gradually begins from the third century A.H. Generally speaking, the early Islamic centuries can be considered as the formation and development of brickwork ornamentation, which reaches its peak in the Seljuk era, thus the richest brick-making projects develops in this era, because during this period, artists managed to create numerous works and structures with the element due to the calm and stability of the Seljuk territory. After this period, bricklaying works continued during the Kharazmshahi era in the Khorasan area, and in the course of the Ilkhani period, its development was reduced and other techniques such as acrography and tiling were popularized.

The center of Amman (Downtown) is one of the most marvelous sites in Jordan as it represents a wide range of heritage through time and space. However, the Downtown suffers from severe disorders in terms of negative urban development due to the cross cutting cultures between the past and present. Despite of its historical and cultural richness, several factors affected the architectural uniformity of the area. The successive cultural effect is clearly marked in the downtown of Amman. Political factors, such as the arrival of the Iraqi and Syrian refugees, significantly controlled the urban planning development in a heterogeneous way created poor and overcrowded areas of immigrants due to many residential abusive areas. Moreover, the lack of innovation and maintenance of the entire downtown area with no changes through time in addition to the lack of awareness made the downtown unable to response to various emergencies. Natural hazards threats for examples earthquakes and floods are considered as a big challenge influencing the urban, economic and cultural development process, particularly due its location in a valley surrounded by seven hills. The current study focuses on finding solutions to overcome the mufti-folds of risk surrounding the area. Recommendations are put forwards for decision makers to maintain the Amman Downtown form further degradation.

The main purpose of this paper is to explain the factors affecting the change of service land uses in the city of Shiraz and identify its reasons. For this purpose, the second-order confirmatory factor analysis technique has been used as one of the structural equation modeling techniques to determine the severity of the effect of the four factors on land use change, through which a contributing framework for the effects of the four factors (physical, activity, economic, accessibility) on land use change is obtained. Finally, the extent and direction of the factors affecting the realization of service land uses in the city of Shiraz are explained using the structural equation model (SEM). In order to achieve these goals, 50 variables affecting 600 plots in Shiraz city are extracted through field method. The variables are investigated and analyzed using GIS maps, Amos and SPSS software, and a series of bi-variable correlations in a table called correlation matrix or covariance, the most notably of which are confirmatory factor analysis and SEM. The results of the research show that, in total, the selected four factors have a significant effect on the land use change. It is such that the standardized weights of regression for "the effect of the access factor on land use change", "the effect of the economic factor on land use change", "the effect of the activity factor on land use change", and "the effect of the physical factor on land use change" are 0.91, 0.78, 0.65, and 0.56, respectively.

The beginning of the political crisis in Syria, each regional and trans-regional actors have adopted different policies based on their interests and goals in relation to this country. Syria is an exceptional issue for countries in the region and the world's powers like the United States of America, and any transformation in that form might have a fundamental impact on the interests of each of these regional and global powers. Turkey as a regional power and the United States has always been present in the Syrian crisis as a regional power based on its interests. But the United' support of the present groups in Syria has sought to fight ISIS extremists, which Turkey has called for terrorist groups to reduce the US and Turkey relations. The present study was conducted using descriptive-analytic method and using documentation sources to provide a theoretical framework, the question of why Turkey is against United States about the Syrian Kurdish issue? This study investigates the presence of United States in Syria and the support of Kurdish groups, as well as the reaction that Turkey and Iran have been involved in. The findings of this article indicate that the United States support the Kurdish groups in northern Syria has led to conflict of interest between the two countries.