Sustainable Design for Asian Housings: Traditional Culture, Lighting and Aesthetics

Abstract

The population of Asia is approximately 4 billion, about 60% of the world’s current human inhabitants. In economic terms, Asia, especially some cities in the Far East such as Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo and Singapore, has grown and developed considerably and are important centres for global finance market and for consumers’ products. However, with these developments, many important cities in East Asia are densely populated and the majority are living in multi-storey apartment complexes; and this is aptly illustrated by the rapid developments in metropolitan cities of Chongqing and Guangzhou. This has provoked our observation that most of these multi-storey apartment complexes, while meeting the demand for accommodating the masses of people, they are in majority of cases, soulless and are totally deprived of traditional sense of culture or any sense of harmonious communities. From a cultural point of view, there are increasing interests in Asian Traditional Style and this is being adopted by other cultures in the rest of the world. At this point, there is a need to have a deeper understanding of the traditional Asian values and aesthetics, especially, in regard to holistic health of a community and sustainable