Study of Sustainable Settlements of Hawraman, Kurdistan, and Its Sustainable Approaches to Design of a Residential Complex in Mosha Touristic Village, Iran

Abstract

Scholars are increasingly interested in investigating vemacular settlements to discover how they have been sustainable over time and find those utilized strategies which can be utilitarian for the present. Villages of Hawraman, are hitherto uninvestigated settlements in a mountainous region of Kurdistan. Considering their special sustainable characteristics plus climatic similarities of Hawraman region with the site of our project, a residential complex in Mosha touristic village, we studied extensively on these vemacular settlements. At first, through survey method in a descriptive-analytic way we extracted their sustainable characteristics in fields of environmental, economic and social issues. Second, we designed our practical project based on our inspirations from extracted features. At the end, we indicated our project's environmental sustainable advantages rather than surrounding complexes via comparing the rate of energy consumption. In addition, by measuring the degree of social interactions. Social sustainable advantages of our project have been proved. 1. Introduction Vemacular people were aware of the ways benefiting from certain climatic characteristics and controlling those that were less favorable, by choosing appropriate settling arrangements, building shapes, location, orientation and utilizing suitable local materials. Vemacular attitudes responsibly using natural resources can continue with resulting in ecological consequences. Also, a vemacular settlement is an independent local community with the similar social and cultural background. The firm and close relationship between vemacular people helps them to set up a good community, a peaceful living environment which maintains a well organized local society leading to stable socio-cultural consequences. In addition, in the vemacular society, the self-sustaining and endogenous economic pattem relied on the energy and natural resources generated inside (Dasmann, 1985) support the domestic circulation and even running of material supply chain which can contribute to self-reliant economic consequences. In this article, as the vemacular settlements, for the first time we investigated Hawraman's villages from the climatic conditions, social context and vemacular economy perspectives. Through our article, firstly, this region has been elaborately studied by which sustainable environmental, social and economic features were derived and secondly, in a practical project whose site was similar to our case study's region, tbe design of a residential complex in Mosha touristic village inspired by sustainable qualities we gained through our study, presented. Hawraman is a mountainous region located in westem Iran or Iranian Kurdistan, which includes the cities of Pawe and Mariwan, and nonh-eastem Iraq or Iraqi Kurdistan, which includes the city of Halabja. The inhabitants of Hawraman are Kurdish people that speak Hawrami, pan of the Gorani branch of the Kurdish language. "Hawraman is best known for its unique arrangement of cities and villages built along the mountain slopes of the region. Ancient religions are also practiced throughout Hawraman and the region is home to the ancient holy places of the Yarsan faith" (Wikipedia, 2010). Hawraman is one of the most mountainous regions in Iran and has a generally mild and quite pleasant climate throughout the spring and summer. Winters are long and can be very cold with heavy snowfalls.