Low-rise Apartment Research Articles

Energy Performance Assessment Framework for Residential Buildings in Saudi Arabia

The residential sector consumes about 50% of the electricity produced from fossil fuels in Saudi Arabia. The residential energy demand is increasing. Moreover, a simple building energy performance assessment framework is not available for hot arid developing countries. This research proposes an energy performance assessment framework for residential buildings in hot and arid regions, which focuses on three performance criteria: operational energy, GHG emissions, and cost. The proposed framework has been applied to three types of residential buildings, i.e., detached, attached, and low-rise apartments, in five geographical regions of Saudi Arabia. Design Builder® was used to simulate the energy demand in buildings over a whole year. Four types of efficiency improvement interventions, including double-glazed windowpanes, triple-glazed windowpanes, LED lighting, and split air conditioners, were introduced in 12 combinations. Overall, 180 simulations were performed which are based on 12 intervention combinations, three building types, and five regions. Three performance criteria were evaluated for each simulation and then aggregated using a multi-criteria decision analysis method to identify the best intervention strategy for a given building type and a geographical region in Saudi Arabia. Each building type with interventions consumes higher energy in the western, central, and eastern regions and consumes a lesser amount of energy in the southern and northern regions. The proposed framework is helpful for long-term planning of the residential sector.

Composition Patterns of Shared Space in Low Rise Apartments

Composition Patterns of Shared Space in Low Rise Apartments

Toward the formation of parameters influencing the quality of low-rise residential buildings

The construction industry occupies a significant place in the development of any country. The success level of construction projects largely depends on its quality. Poor performance of work leads to different losses. Effective quality management delivers customer satisfaction and value, reduces visible and less visible cost of poor quality. The article aims to identify the main parameters influencing the quality of low-rise residential buildings using expert opinion method. At the first stage, a literature review was conducted, which resulted in a list of 54 individual indicators of technical solutions that affect the quality of low-rise apartment buildings. These quality indicators have different degrees of influence. Experts identified indicators that have a greater impact on the comprehensive quality indicator. Then, the list was shortened up to 34 individual indicators. The survey was conducted in construction companies, research centers, and construction universities. The development of a comprehensive quality index contributes to the achievement of design decisions in construction of residential buildings. The methodological scheme of the study is shown. Using the method of exploratory factor analysis, all indicators were grouped into 7 groups. A conceptual measurement model is defined. Furthermore, a structural model to determine the influence weights of each individual indicator on the corresponding group of factors is shown.

Resilient and Environmentally Efficient Residential Buildings - Assessment Method and Interim Outcomes

Historically, the fire-safety orders restricted the use of majority of the nature-based low impact materials in town buildings. Houses therefore became rigid and resilient. Today, we need to return to those materials, but the tradition and public opinion are preventing changes in building habits. This paper describes the work done within a research project, which aims to define a resilient and low impact residential building. The main goal of the research is a development of an assessment method that evaluates the building’s ability to withstand or easily overcome most important threats which may occur in the Central European area. The research team’s objective was to identify the risks, define the crisis scenarios and to provide an exemplary solution that will ensure the necessary resilience of a model building. The method includes environmental criteria with benchmarks set up to fulfil the requirements of the Paris Agreement. This leads the building design towards the low-impact materials and technologies and towards resilience at the same time. The research team developed an assessment method including 20 criteria. A set of buildings has been evaluated and favourable technical solutions have been developed. Based on the results, a design of a model building was carried out. New equipment and technologies were implemented: removable green facade, natural ventilation with solar chimneys, or a hybrid control system managing renewable sources in the building. The next step should be a test of the technology or the overall design in real conditions. The project outcomes show the possibility of reaching a sufficiently solid and robust design of a low-rise apartment building while following a sustainable design approach at the same time.

The role of dwelling type on food expenditure: a cross-sectional analysis of the 2015-2016 Australian Household Expenditure Survey.

To explore differences in proportion of food budget and total food expenditure by dwelling type. A cross-sectional study using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2015-2016 Household Expenditure Survey. Food expenditure was examined on multiple categories: fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, pre-prepared meals, meals in restaurants, hotels and clubs, and fast food and takeaway meals, using two-part models and zero-one inflated beta regression models. Dwelling types were categorised as separate house, semi-detached house, low-rise apartment and high-rise apartment. Australia, 2015-2016. Seven thousand three hundred and fifty-eight households from greater capital city areas. Households living in high-rise apartments were estimated to allocate a greater proportion of their food budget to meals in restaurants, hotels and clubs, and to spend more (actual dollars) on that category, compared with other dwelling types. No substantial differences were estimated in the proportion of food budget allocated to the other food categories across dwelling types. The dwelling type households live in may play a role in their food budget. Households living in a high-rise apartment may potentially spend more on meals in restaurants, hotels and clubs than those living in other dwelling types. Given the growth in urban population and the changes in living arrangements, findings point to the critical need for a better understanding of the influence of dwelling types on food expenditure and call for research investigating the relationship between the two.

No. 16 Model House Road

No. 16 Model House Road Sindya Bhanoo (bio) Latha's fingers tug at a loose strand of wicker on the arm of the loveseat. She is sitting next to Muthu on the well-worn, pale green cushions. The developer woman sits across from them, on the matching single sofa. Her toenails are painted a shade of light blue that remind Latha of the soap she uses when she does the laundry. The woman is wearing linen pants and a red cotton shirt, appropriately high-necked and pleasantly loose, with a stylish outward flare at the waist. One of her legs is crossed over the other, and the boldness of this shocks Latha. Not because she thinks women should not cross their legs. She believes that women can do anything. Her own daughter works, and she sees women working on the TV serials she watches. Latha is shocked because, for the first time, she is observing a woman at work—with the style, posture, and demeanor of a professional—right in front of her, in her home. Mornings in Bangalore are typically crisp and cool, but this morning there is a bit of warm sun and it streams through the grilled window, casting a shadow of bars that stretch underneath Latha and Muthu's round, glass-topped coffee table. The woman has her papers spread out over the glass, one page right on top of the plate of butter biscuits that Latha set out: sketches, floor plans, and photographs detailing what things could be like. They could have three bedrooms or four, she says. Right now, they only have two. She directs her words towards Muthu, though it is Latha who actually owns No. 16 Model House Road. Binny left it to her when she died, not to him. "The living area will increase by 50 percent with most options," the woman says, her English clean and crisp. "Remarkable what we can do." The developer's proposal is simple: to demolish Latha's beloved No. 16 and, in its place, erect a thoughtfully constructed, modern, low-rise apartment building. Four stories. Four flats. All costs covered by the company. During the year it would take to construct the new building, the company would cover the cost of Latha and Muthu's housing with a generous lump sum. At the end of it all, the bottom flat would go to Latha and Muthu, and the other three would go to the developer and be sold at a big profit. It was a scheme happening all over Bangalore in various forms, as the city's tech industry grew at an explosive rate. Property values were higher than they had ever been, and housing was almost impossible to find. A few years ago, another developer had offered to buy their plot. Theirs was just a one-and-aquarter–ground plot but that developer had been willing to pay them three crores for it. They declined. [End Page 142] Today, the woman has four layouts for Latha and Muthu to choose from. Latha is partial to the smallest of the floorplans because it offers the most garden space. But she knows Muthu has disregarded it. While Muthu studies the plans, Latha continues to study the woman. Her hair is long, loose, and straight, cut unevenly in the front so that pieces of it touch her cheeks and chin. The unevenness appears to be intentional. She is in her early thirties, Latha thinks, based on her still-firm skin and the presence of a single visible gray hair that runs down from her side part. She is not wearing a thaali around her neck, or a ring, but that means nothing in Bangalore these days. Even Latha's daughter, newly married, only wears her thaali when attending a wedding or some other family function. "From the beginning, I have liked this one," Muthu says. He points to a layout that appears to have an extra room jutting out the back. From the beginning. Muthu had wanted to take the deal the first time the company made a proposal, nearly ten months ago. The woman is the fourth person from the company to come to their...

STUDY OF “RUSUN” TYPOLOGY BASED ON THERMAL COMFORT ANALYSIS USING SOFTWARE SIMULATION METHOD IN RUSUNAWA TYPE-30

Simple rental Flats (Rusunawa) is the government's role in overcoming the need for housing, so that the quality of housing becomes more feasible. The feasibility can be seen from the thermal side of the flat so that the occupants of the flat are more comfortable living in it. This research simulates with software in low-rise apartment buildings so that they get a typology of effective and thermally comfortable flat-panel design. The typology can be a directive for architects in designing a flat which prioritizes thermal comfort for the occupants as well as a flat design that is quite effective and profitable for developers. The software used is Ecotect, Energy Plus, CFD and Dialux. With the simulation software, the double load corridor layout is more effective in terms of development costs and still has a good air exchange. While the orientation of the North-South building is better so that it can reduce the amount of openings from the direction of the coming sunlight.

Sip-technology as solution in low-rise multi-family residential buildings

The article is devoted to the study of the possibility of using SIP-technology in solving the problem of housing shortages in Bujumbura. The author analyzed the design features of houses, foreign experience in the development of low-rise construction, the advantages of using SIP-panels compared to other building materials. Organizational and technological solutions for the construction of low-rise apartment buildings using SIP-panels will help to provide the population with comfortable housing at an affordable price. The SIP-technology enables the construction in places with difficult terrain due to their difficult engineering and geological conditions.

Study on location trend of low-rise and rental apartment houses in local cities

Study on location trend of low-rise and rental apartment houses in local cities

Extraction and height estimation of artificial vertical structures based on the wrapped interferometric phase difference within their layovers

The geometric modulation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery such as radar shadow, foreshortening, and layover often complicates image interpretation while it contains useful information about targets. Recently, some methods for automatic building detection utilizing a peculiar pattern of phase differences (PDs) within building layovers on SAR interferograms have been proposed. One of the merits of these methods is the capability to detect buildings even taller than the height of ambiguity without incorporating any external data. In this paper, we propose a new method that has achieved the following improvements while maintaining the merit mentioned above. The first improvement is freedom from the dependence of target heights; without changing any parameters and thresholds, the proposed method can detect low-rise apartments to skyscrapers. The second one is the prevention of the false grouping of vertical structure constituents by considering relationships between their PDs. In addition, the method can measure the height of vertical structures without assuming their shape to be simple ones such as a parallelogram. These improvements have been verified by applying the method to real datasets acquired from an airborne X-band SAR. The quantitative assessment for apartment complexes has demonstrated the high performance of the method; the correctness and completeness are 94% and 83%, respectively. The mean error in the measured height is −0.2 m, while the standard deviation is 1.8 m. The verification using real datasets has revealed at the same time that the performance of the method can be degraded due to the crowdedness in dense urban areas including skyscrapers and owing to the poor discriminability between artificial vertical structures and trees. Overcoming these limitations is necessary in future studies.

Evaluating the determinants of high-rise apartment water demand through integration of water consumption, land use and demographic data

Abstract Over the past decades rapid population growth in urban areas has promoted the development of high-density housing such as high-rise apartments. In order to properly supply water to this growing sector, it is essential to understand the determinants of its water use. However, this task has largely remained unexplored through the empirical study of water demand mainly due to the scarcity of data in this sector. Using a rich source of GIS-based urban databases in Auckland, New Zealand, this study integrated apartment water consumption, property characteristics, weather, water pricing and census microdata to overcome this issue. This study also compared high-rise apartment water use and its determinants with low-rise apartments. Through applying panel data models, the study revealed that, similar to the low-rise apartments, household size is the most important determinant of high-rise apartment water use in Auckland, where other socioeconomic factors, building features, water pricing and weather variables were not significant determinants. The study also showed that the per capita water consumption in the high-rise apartments in Auckland was higher than in the low-rise apartments, challenging the assumption underlying contemporary urban policy that densifying the central city areas can offer significant savings in water use.

Beyond abundance: How microenvironmental features and weather influence Bartonella tribocorum infection in wild Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus).

Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) inhabit cities worldwide and carry a number of zoonotic pathogens. Although many studies have investigated rat-level risk factors, there is limited research on the effects of weather and environment on zoonotic pathogen transmission ecology in rats. The objective of this study was to use a disease ecology approach to understand how abiotic (weather and urban microenvironmental features) and biotic (relative rat population abundance) factors affect Bartonella tribocorum prevalence in urban Norway rats from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This potentially zoonotic pathogen is primarily transmitted by fleas and is common among rodents, including rats, around the world. During a systematic rat trap and removal study, city blocks were evaluated for 48 environmental variables related to waste, land/alley use and property condition, and rat abundance. We constructed 32 weather (temperature and precipitation) variables with time lags prior to the date we captured each rat. We fitted multivariable logistic regression models with rat pathogen status as the outcome. The odds of a rat testing positive for B.tribocorum were significantly lower for rats in city blocks with one or more low-rise apartment buildings compared to blocks with none (OR=0.20; 95% CI: 0.04-0.80; p=.02). The reason for this association may be related to unmeasured factors that influence pathogen transmission and maintenance, as well as flea vector survival. Bartonella tribocorum infection in rats was positively associated with high minimum temperatures for several time periods prior to rat capture. This finding suggests that a baseline minimum temperature may be necessary for flea vector survival and B.tribocorum transmission among rats. There was no significant association with rat abundance, suggesting a lack of density-dependent pathogen transmission. This study is an important first step to understanding how environment and weather impacts rat infections including zoonotic pathogen ecology in urban ecosystems.

캐나다 광역 밴쿠버지역 저층 아파트의 단위주호별 평면 배치의 특성과 선호 사항

본 연구는 캐나다 광역 밴쿠버 지역, 저층 아파트 평면 배치의 최근 설계 동향을 분석함으로써 우리의 실정에도 적용 가능한 계획과 차별된 요소들을 조명해보고자 한다. 1개동, 6층 이하의 규모로서 신규 분양 중에 있는 저층 아파트를 조사대상으로 한정하였으며, 직접 관찰과 질의응답의 형성적 리서치 그리고 도면과 판매현황 배치도 분석을 통한 문헌연구의 부가적 리서치 방법을 토대로 조사대상을 분석하였다. 연구결과, 배치 계획에 있어서 소규모 세대를 공급하는 아파트일수록 더욱 다양한 평면타입을 제공하고 있었으며, 대부분의 아파트가 층간 배치의 차별화를 주고 있었다. 가장 많이 배치된 단위주호의 규모는 2Bedroom 63~105㎡로, 소인가구가 저층 아파트의 주거주 세대 대상임을 예상할 수 있었다. 선호 사항 측면에서는 세대가 놓이는 방위의 위치를 우선시하기보다는 프라이버시와 전망 확보 및 소음이 적은 위치에 선호도가 높음을 알 수 있었다.

Ethnography in movement: bounding the field between the compound and the trailer in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACTSocial anthropological research often deploys ethnographies of dwelling, following and immersing. While many of these ethnographic practices are an essential part, and a matter of fact, of simply being there, research in Riyadh requires doing fieldwork and bounding the field differently. Swathes of highways and boulevards, endless tracts of walls, individual villas and low-rise apartment buildings come to the fore and make their anonymizing and atomizing imprint felt on the ethnographer’s oft-cherished ‘everyday’. They have earned the city titles such as a ‘city of walls’, a ‘city of closed spaces’ or even an ‘anti-city’. Serendipity and spontaneity feel elusive and out of reach under the disciplining and surveilling arms of the state as well as the conservatism of society. Drawing inspiration from a Bedouin idiom of movement, shadda, this article lays out how I discovered an alternative method of doing fieldwork under such circumstances. I show how movement—that is, moving alongside, across and through the banalities and complexities of everyday life—is an indispensable and key way of doing fieldwork as well as delimiting the ethnographic field. Notions of lateral movement emerge as a counterpoint to immersion, embeddedness, integration and other such figurative expressions of downward passage into the field. More specifically, I discuss the metaphors of horizontal movement and thresholds that unfold on the scale of the city, the car and the unconscious. Thresholds, varying multifariously from gates to doors and checkpoints, feature prominently in this urban landscape, not only as literal and figurative gateways to the field but as outcomes of clashing political and epistemological processes.

Future implications of urban intensification on residential water demand

Over recent decades Auckland, New Zealand, metropolitan area has vastly expanded as a result of rapid population growth and low-density housing developments. In order to manage the uncontrolled low-density urban sprawl, Auckland Council proposed a compact city model through promoting higher density housing developments. In order to understand the implications of this transition on future residential water demand, this study first evaluated water consumption in three major housing types in Auckland including single houses, low-rise and high-rise apartments. Using the geographic information system, the water consumption information, estimated from a large sample of 60,000 dwellings across Auckland, was subsequently integrated with the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan outlining the future housing composition over different areas in Auckland. Through developing different growth scenarios, the study showed that the housing transition from single houses to more intensified multi-unit houses cannot considerably affect the average per capita water consumption in Auckland.

A Multi‐Scale Analysis of Low‐Rise Apartment Water Demand through Integration of Water Consumption, Land Use, and Demographic Data

AbstractOver the past decades, multi‐unit housing developments have been vastly expanded across urban areas due to the population growth. To properly supply water to this growing sector, it is essential to understand the determinants of its water use. However, this task has largely remained unexplored through the empirical study of water demand mainly due to the scarcity of data in this sector. This study integrated apartment water consumption, property characteristics, weather, water pricing, and census microdata to overcome this issue. Using a rich source of GIS‐based urban databases in Auckland, New Zealand, the study developed a large dataset containing the information of 18,000 low‐rise apartments to evaluate the determinants of water use both in the household scale and aggregated scale. The household‐scale demand analysis helped to assess the heterogeneity in responses to the demand drivers specifically water price across different consumer groups, whereas the aggregated analysis revealed the determinants behind the spatial variation in water demand at the census area unit level. Through applying panel data models, the study revealed the household size as the most important determinant of apartment water use in Auckland, where other socioeconomic factors, building features, and water pricing were not significant determinants. This knowledge of determinants of water demand can help water planners to better manage water demand in the compact urban environments.

Review: The World of Charles and Ray Eames

The World of Charles and Ray Eames Barbican Art Gallery, Barbican Centre, London 21 October 2015–14 February 2016 The Barbican Centre, in the City of London, is an extensive postwar development of 1955–82 by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon comprising high-rise residential towers, low-rise apartments, a major theater, cinemas, and an art gallery, all robustly executed in exposed-aggregate concrete and purple-brown brick and tile. It is very good of its kind, but it is the antithesis of anything one might associate with the delicate, colorful world of Charles and Ray Eames. In the same space where the Barbican Art Gallery's curator Catherine Ince presented the exhibition Bauhaus: Art as Life in 2012, she attempted, for The World of Charles and Ray Eames , to imbue the heavy, windowless gallery with some of the sunlight of Southern California, and she largely succeeded. Much of the concrete structure that penetrates the gallery was hidden behind white or dark-gray wall panels on which exhibits and labels were sparingly displayed and from which a framework of cold-formed galvanized steel studs emerged to provide a sense of lightweight if temporary construction (Figure 1). In the absence of any attempt to re-create all or part of the Eameses’ house in Pacific Palisades, California—as was done in the Case Study Houses …

THE ONTOLOGICAL QUESTIONS OF PERSONALIZE HOMES CUSTOMIZED ARCHITECTURAL ONLINE DESIGNING

The article reveals the problem of the limited application of existing information technologies at the stage of conceptual designing. According to the authors, this problem has a cause, rooted in the dominant theoretical and methodological approaches to modeling architectural design, influenced the ways of its formalization. Architectural design evolved at the intersection of two poorly coordinated with each other configurations of objectivity and subjectivity: its object is far from an open and creative ontology as substituted typological descriptions of past experience, and its subjectivity wrongly identified with the artistic will of the architect-creator. This large-scale, we can say the historical disposition the authors examine on a particular example design of low-rise individual houses - one of the traditional, archetypal architectural objects, which have a decisive role by subjectivity. The necessity of revision of the ontological representations, departure from the standard solutions for the depersonalized consumer to customizable ones obtained in a conversation with a specific user. We describe a prototype of a cloud system of computer-aided system of low-rise apartment buildings that can provide a solution to these problems developed in the authors' small innovative company «Bureau of environmental design».

‘A Victorian community overseas’ transformed: demographic and morphological change in suburban Melbourne, Australia, 1947–1981

ABSTRACTOne of the world's great Victorian-era suburban metropolises, Melbourne, Australia, was transformed by mass immigration and the redevelopment of some of its older suburbs with low-rise flats and apartments in the post-war years. Drawing on a range of sources, including census material, municipal rate and valuation books, immigration and company records, as well as building industry publications, this article charts demographic and morphological change across the Melbourne metropolitan area and in two particular suburbs in the mid- to late twentieth century. In doing so, it both responds to McManus and Ethington's recent call for more histories of suburbs in transition, and seeks to embed the role of immigration and immigrants into Melbourne's urban historiography.

Experience of Design Works for the Space in Residential Buildings with Consideration of Contemporary Needs of Society

In the paper the questions of the design of a low-rise apartment building with a spiritual center are considered, the special features of the child's personality under different conditions of living environment are studied. The author recommends an improvement of the functional-and-planning organization for an apartment building. The aforesaid improvement was developed in the thesis project performed at the department "Design of buildings and urban planning", MGSU, within the programme of sustainable development of architecture.