Chapters authored
City Phenomenon between Urban Structure and Composition By Amjad Almusaed and Asaad Almssad
Cities are not just a sum of buildings, but especially a set of social relations that their inhabitants develop. Cities are characterized by a wide variety of social groups and lifestyles. An urban composition represents a form of the city in which it gets a formal order, so that the shape of any urban ensemble is not linked to a random phenomenon, but to an intervention mastered and understood as such. For the city, the urban composition represents what the architectural composition represents for a building. This concept regarding the composition is common both to the architecture and to the city. The main property of the composition is that it transforms a possibly dispersed ensemble into a whole, resolving the contradictions that arise when the requirements and conditions of the project are numerous. Spatial forms and urban compositions are built over time, longer than that of architectural composition. On the other hand, “design of the urban environment” is understood by us as a complex formation of public spaces of the city, located on the ground floor level of the city building and ensuring the vital activity of the urban community. This chapter will study the city phenomenon on a large scale.
Part of the book: Sustainability in Urban Planning and Design
Urban Social Sustainability - Case Study; Gellerupparken–Denmark By Amjad Almusaed and Asaad Almssad
Urban social sustainability represents a more specific part of urban development. Citizen involvement is a vital element of any future urban social development and helps to maintain the vision of human and diverse cities because it provides vibrant and sustainable cities in which everyone has a seat and can speak. Gellerupparken, as something new, also meets all five criteria for when an area is a ghetto during a given year. The criteria generally consist of income, ethnic origin, level of education, crime, and employment. The study’s aim is to present an objective means, to the reactivation of a passive multicultural zone in Aarhus city of Denmark to integrate it in the social life city by using the appreciative inquiry method by an introduction of new city functions. The study will assume the effect of sustainability in an urban social area, in a case study using the application of the pedagogical method, namely, the “appreciative inquiry” method.
Part of the book: Sustainability in Urban Planning and Design
Lessons from the World Sustainable Housing (Past Experiences, Current Trends, and Future Strategies) By Amjad Almusaed and Asaad Almssad
The term vernacular architecture is widely accepted by architects and derives from the Latin “VERNACULUS”, which means “domestic, native, indigenous”, local. So vernacular architecture designates the entire culture built from a particular place. In modern housing design, the inheritance and development of traditional architectural culture is reflected in the inheritance of classic architectural forms and craftsmanship and the rational application of traditional building systems. With the progress of social civilization and the improvement of technological level, various innovative building systems emerge in an endless stream and are widely used in modern housing design. In today’s rapid social and economic development, housing changes are coming quickly, sometimes even seeming a bit rough. At present, more attention is paid to the construction of new residential areas. As far as the field of urban architecture is concerned, the human settlement environment can be understood explicitly as people’s living and living environment. Today architects need to design a settlement that balances all social functions between meeting current needs and future development, designing energy and material-saving buildings, so that it is in harmony with the environment, and is conducive to the physical and mental health of the human body. In other words, the planning process requires attention to human behavior, psychology, emotions, and interpersonal relationships.
Part of the book: Sustainable Housing
Sustainable Wooden Skyscrapers for the Future Cities By Amjad Almusaed and Asaad Almssad
At the time of writing, energy-saving and eco-friendly building materials have gained acceptance, recognition, and a strong foothold in the construction sector. There is an appreciable degree of congruence in the development of green buildings and bio-based building materials, making it imperative to promote and sustain the application of such materials. Wood is endowed with a host of favorable properties sought after in a building material—its organic warmth, softness, ability to control indoor moisture levels and act as a good insulator, malleability, and workability, to name a few. Wooden buildings blend perfectly into the surrounding landscapes much better than their counterparts. It facilitates design for lightweight and strength, is a renewable resource, and accords stability and seismic resistance to structures. The focus of this chapter is on wooden skyscrapers which promise to be a greener and eco-friendlier option vis-à-vis the conventional concrete high-rises.
Part of the book: Wood Industry
Blending Human Ware with Software and Hardware in the Design of Smart Cities By Amjad Almusaed and Asaad Almssad
Sustainable innovation entails realizing society-oriented value creation in an environment-friendly manner. A smart city can be viewed as a holistic paradigm that avails of state-of-the-art information and communication technologies (ICTs, in other words) to advance the so-called “Internet of Things.” This aids the management of urban processes and improves the quality of life for the citizens. Smart cities are bound to keep getting “smarter” as the ICTs keep developing. While the technological factor represented by the IoT, augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence, urban digital twinning, cloud computing, and mobile Internet is a driving factor unarguably, innovation in urban ecology is a vital socio-economic factor that will spur the transformation of urban areas in the world to smart cities. In this chapter, the authors answer the “what,” how, and “who,” so to say, of the paradigm—smart cities—with real-life examples and a case study. They emphasize the importance of human ware and remind readers that technology—the all-encompassing Internet of Things with its infantry of cameras, sensors, and electronic devices—though powerful, is a humble servant in the service of the inhabitants of a smart city.
Part of the book: Sustainable Smart Cities
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