Abstract
Contemporary architecture reveals its similarity in almost every part of the world without any consideration of regional characteristics in contrast to vernacular architecture which is almost always climatically appropriate, where architects and builders traditionally had to design with respect to nature and the local climate. Contemporary Libyan architecture has rarely recognized the local climate or renewable energy issues, and these subjects are neglected or rarely studied. Whereas Libyan local vernacular architecture includes traditional solutions that have been tested over centuries, providing passive design for low energy consumption as well as creating architecture related to the local environment. This architecture provides a motivating and valid lesson and it also illustrates and presents a wealth of knowledge about how humans remain in touch with nature and how they adjust to the local natural environment and climate. This research aims to provide guidelines for architects to consider how to incorporate climatic design in creating architecture related to the local environment that should provide more sustainable solutions in hot climate regions. The study uses the concept of sustainable development to offer a holistic perspective to establish a body of knowledge on passive climatic design that could benefit architects when designing future housing. According to this general understanding, this research project focuses on the interrelationship between passive climatic design and vernacular architecture in such situations. It aims to look at the theoretical and experimental studies that have demonstrated the usefulness of passive climatic design techniques in context with the cooling of buildings in hot regions in order to establish climatic design guidelines using Tripoli, Libya as the case example. The guidelines are developed for housing design, and take on board the opinions of end users and professionals as well as understanding building performance from the climatic point of view. This research has, therefore, adopted a broad methodology to achieve the aim. Both deductive and inductive approaches have been selected where theoretical strategies are first confirmed from the existing literature which are then investigated using an array of appropriate methods (questionnaire, interviews and focus group as well as sampling the internal temperatures inside selected case study houses) to examine the thermal comfort in both vernacular and contemporary housing. This research is mainly qualitative with quantitative methods also used in the sampling. The results of the study are merged together to produce guidelines that can help architects in terms of using climatic design principles in future housing in hot climate regions. The main conclusions of the study are: - Respondents depend on air-conditioning to achieve internal comfort in all house types that increases concern about energy efficiency and increasing pollutions. - Respondents prefer houses that combine traditional and modern features. - Courtyard houses have many positive points, but there are some functional disadvantages and this house type has a negative image. - Contemporary houses provide more comfort, flexibility, privacy, area and possibilities to use new technology. - However measurements undertaken show better passive thermal performance in the courtyard house than in other contemporary examples.