Integrated Housing Approach for Riyadh’s hot arid Climate: solutions from the desert vernacular

Abstract

The house is one of the purest forms of cultural reflection and it is the place where the design can have the most influence on people’s life and daily practice. Thus the proposal for this thesis will look at exploring and introducing a different form of housing to the Saudi urban fabric. This form will be different than the typical Saudi house in the following aspects: Firstly: it will look at the house as a living dynamic object. It will be dynamic in its spatial configuration giving the user the control on the uses and occupations of the space accommodating both conservative and less conservative users. Secondly, It will also be dynamic in the way in which this house uses and produces energy. Like a living system this house would look at waste from one part of the system as an input for another part. In this case the use of grey water is optimize to be integrated with cooling towers. The cooling system here have three modes of operation and each mode is designed to operate for a specific micro climatic condition. It uses both passive and active cooling techniques and lessons from both the Saudi vernacular architecture and precedents of high performance buildings in hot arid climates to optimize the cooling cycle within the system. Thirdly: the proposal will look at the house as a system that is one part of a bigger system it terms of potential energy production and promoting green spaces in both the house structure and the urban fabric. It will look at the housing fabric, as a way to promote social justice and equal excess to green space with out clashing with people believes.