Traditional houses

In addition to attention to natural light as a renewable, costless and environment-friendly source of energy in the late 20th century, numerous studies have been conducted into the effect of natural light on human being’s soul and body and all such studies reiterate the undeniable role of natural lighting on people’s behavior, attitudes, and efficiency. However, in spite of the awareness of the effects of natural light on human beings as well as on the environment, source of lighting in most buildings is still limited to artificial lighting and most of the solutions used in the old architecture with regard to the use of natural lighting have been forgotten nowadays. This paper, based upon a holistic approach and a qualitative research method analyses a few traditional houses in Hot and Dry climate of Iran and showed how their builders by using architectural elements as well as different methods of space organization so to better use light to satisfy the physical and psychological needs of the inhabitants,including visual and heat comfort, health, introducing  variety and increasing space quality. As we will see, this research describes the methods they tried to create a balance between physical and psychological needs of the inhabitants and to supply the required energy.

Traditional houses enjoy an organizing with inner spaces based on religious and traditional notions of Iranian families. Space flexibility, readability, introversion, spatial hierarchy and family privacy have had a special status in architecture of Iranian houses, replaced with an outward-oriented architecture. The traditional architecture which has had all the necessary spaces for any communication inside the house has converted to the hotel architecture that its residents have not expected the stability and comfort from it, to whom just the equipment and services at hotel architecture are of great importance to which they have no sense and attachment. Living at contemporary houses has raised the problems such as reduced sense of belonging, comfort and emotional and family problems. The present research intends to compare traditional houses with contemporary houses by study on architecture plans of Iranian traditional houses and emphasis on their spatial richness and quality so as to get familiar with spatial concepts of these houses and take an effective step on how to influence these neglected concepts on single-dimensional spaces of contemporary houses.