Climatic Considerations in Iranian Vernacular Settlements

Abstract

There is a significant relationship between the natural environment and mankind in both discourse and practical aspects of people’s lives. A glance backward is enough to reveal our ancestor’s ability in synchronizing with the nature in order to gain its benefits by providing human necessities via environment and showing their accurate considerations to the surrounding environment by living in harmony with it. Despite the well background of the relationship between people and the environment, ignorantly, we satisfy all the levels of needs and our requirements by means of technological machines and spending energy. This attitude results in problems at global scales present in every single project in local scales. These days, buildings and cities have thoroughly changed without considering their own unique climatic conditions and characteristics. They do not follow their traditional patterns anymore and gradually incline toward un-sustainability.As the vernacular architecture manifests a great deal of experience, wisdom and cleverness, old buildings are worth studying in some detail for valuable clues as well as ideas. In this context, more knowledge and investigation of the common issues in the fields of vernacular architecture are necessary to obtain more environmental friendly constructions, mainly by referring to the environmental features and sustainable development. Furthermore, the main objective of this study is putting much concentration on different aspects of climatic considerations in Iranian settlements as a source of sustainability. In other words, this research wants to answer the question of how it is possible to benefit from natural resources in order to obtain maximum amount of the building energy supply by considering the modern living standards. In this respect, Yazd as a city, where the vernacular urban and architectural patterns- such as wind-catcher - provide useful hints for sustainable design has been selected to better understand the specific influences of respecting the climatic issues in architecture.