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A. Mahdavi:
"Learning from traditional architecture through building diagnostics and performance modeling";
Talk: 12th Symposium for Building Physics, Dresden, 29th - 31th March 2007, Dresden, Deutschland; 2007-03-29 - 2007-03-31; in: "12th Symposium for Building Physics - 12. Bauklimatisches Symposium, Dresden, 29th - 31th March 2007", P. Häupl, J. Roloff (ed.); Eigenverlag, 1 (2007), ISBN: 978-3-86005-564-9; 11 - 22.

Traditional buildings around the world embody numerous intelligent design features, emerged and refinde through the historical process of adjustment to local climatic conditions and social functions. To tap into this potentially rich source of design knowledge, a thorough understanding of the working of such environmentally adapted buildings is necessary. Toward this end, the typically available general qualitative descriptions of the respective design strategies must be complemented with detailed performance analyses based on high - resolution empirical data. The present contribution attempts to introduce a systematic framework for and the initial results of a research effort to obtain, analyze, and interpret data from traditional buildings. Specifically, an ongoing research effort is presented to collect local climate and building performance data regarding a number of traditional hamman (bath) buildings in the North-African and Mediterranean countries.

Traditional architecture, bioclimatic design, hammams, building diagnostics, performance modeling