Special Issue Journal of Sustainability Science and Studies

Special Issue 1, December 2009

Article Number: 02

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Permanency as a new understanding of sustainability: Case study using traditional Iranian architecture

P. Hanachi, Z. Zamani, and M. Taleghani  

Pages 8-14

Abstract—Nowadays, one of the most contradictable topics in architectural societies is sustainability. The term “sustainability” has many usages in different fields of study such as management, construction, urbanism and etc. Sustainable architecture usually defined by some theories that consist natural and physical environment, energy consumption, recyclable materials and etc. one solution to understand sustainability in architecture is to recognize architectural strategies which were in use in past and then, have become successfully to modern strategies for our contemporary era. This paper aims to describe traditional Iranian architecture as an illustration of sustainability in architecture. For this, we will clarify the new meaning of sustainability in architecture in two steps: The former, a comprehensive sustainable architecture theory will be introduced and categorized all traditional Iranian architectural strategies in three main images: a) Natural; b) Cultural; c) Technical. The latter, modern architectural strategies which are based on traditional Iranian ones will be introduced. As a matter of fact, wind catchers in traditional Iranian architecture will be introduced at first, and then we will see the current form of this strategy in final part of the paper. Consequently, identifying the traditional and current form of some architectural strategies allows us to understand a new meaning of sustainability in architecture. This paper calls this meaning permanency. This new understanding from sustainability lets us utilize old solutions to modern and suitable one which can be used in our contemporary architecture.

Keywords—cultural image, natural image, permanency, sustainable architecture, technical image, traditional Iranian architecture.