Investigating Sustainability of the Traditional Courtyard Houses Using Deep Beauty Framework

Abstract

In Pakistan, power outages have become frequent over the past two decades, due to a continuing energy crisis. Reliance on machines for thermal comfort of buildings has led to high energy demands of the increasing population. The negative impacts of artificial environments have, also, diminished the sense of place, biophilia and cultural values. Moreover, globalization has stand-ardized the built environments, causing a lack of regional identity and an absence of climate sensi-tivity in design. Keeping all these issues in focus, this article re-examines the fundamental aspects of traditional architecture and aims to stimulate architects and designers to create sustainable and life-enriching designs, which are appropriate for contemporary times. In this research, the first two levels of Deep Beauty functional and typological, are used as a conceptual framework for sustainable design. For this, research findings of the book, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, are employed as a conceptual guide, for analyzing a representative of a traditional courtyard house. In conjunction with the theoretical underpinnings of the Deep Beauty framework, the analysis uti-lizes photographs, drawings, and diagrams to support the arguments. The research shows that the traditional courtyard house possesses numerous attributes of sustainable design, which can be in-corporated into contemporary house design.