Traditional Inspiration for a Climatic Responsive Contemporary Architecture

Bioclimatic architecture might be a modern term , but our forefathers had achieved a comfortable environment in traditional buildings . Over many centuries, various designs and building techniques have developed across the world in different climatic zones, bringing forth buildings that provide a comfortable living condition depending on the natural resources and without the use of sophisticated mechanical devices. Most builders in the past were aware of the ways they could benefit from climatic features through choose for appropriate building shapes, location, orientation and the use of appropriate building materials. While the modern buildings disregard climatic factors in achieving thermal comfort and depend on equipments, such as air-conditioning and mechanical ventilation systems which affect on building performance and energy consumption for heating, cooling and ventilation , in addition to problems of the global warming and the climatic changes as a result . This situations would increase the energy consumption for heating and cooling in buildings and affects comfort . Thus, there are need to detailed knowledge about the interaction between the local climate and the energy consumption of building , Accordingly, a climate should be one of the most im-portant design criteria in order to obtain the optimum design, which can be energy efficient and an achievable to the highest degree of thermal comfort for human . The overall aim is to provide a comprehensive analysis and explanation of the basic conditions of climate responsive building design in hot climate and rethinking in old basic strategies of the traditional architecture which proved the optimal response to climatic factors over time. An analysis of traditional building methods shows many different methods of climate adapta-tion that reflecting a different cultures . Some cases of traditional architecture in Arab world were examined and it was explained how they create appropriate environment through their de-sign and the utilization of the natural resources of energy. On another hand , the study identifies and analyses the elements of the traditional buildings , which are inherent in solar and bioclimatic architecture in hot climate , with focus on the traditional architecture of old Aleppo , and highlight the situation of the climatic design in the new housing sector in Aleppo . Through comparative concludes to the optimal choice between the different design al-ternatives based on their potential for response climate and closer examination of a loca-tion and its prevailing climate provides the potential to develop more efficient customized solutions , and results indicate that improved performance might be achieved by combining the selected lessons from the traditional architecture with modern technology.