No abstract

Energy Efficiency has become an integral necessity at a global scale and with the rapidly escalating population around the world, the energy demand has also amplified to extreme levels, making the provision of energy a real challenge. Henceforth, implementation of more efficient conservative measures must be targeted as the supply of fossil fuels is not infinite and the extensive energy consumption is causing harm to the environment. With the continuously growing demand for energy, and as per the forecast of the International Energy Agency, it is expected that the rise will be up to fifty percent by 2030. Recently, more than eighty percent of primary energy demand is being fulfilled by fossil fuels; and the reservoirs of fossil fuels are fast depleting. The result is climate change at the global level, leading to unprecedented and varied effects on weather events, droughts, and hurricanes in many countries and also flooding in major sectors of the world. It has been realized that fifty percent of the energy produced in the world is utilized by residential buildings. To control the emission of greenhouse gases, it is important to use architectural design techniques to make residential buildings more energy efficient for maintaining the thermal comfort level of occupants.

In Pakistan, power outages have become frequent over the past two decades, due to a continuing energy crisis. Reliance on machines for thermal comfort of buildings has led to high energy demands of the increasing population. The negative impacts of artificial environments have, also, diminished the sense of place, biophilia and cultural values. Moreover, globalization has standardized the built environments, causing a lack of regional identity and an absence of climate sensitivity in design. Keeping all these issues in focus, this article re-examines the fundamental aspects of traditional architecture and aims to stimulate architects and designers to create sustainable and life-enriching designs, which are appropriate for contemporary times. In this research, the first two levels of Deep Beauty functional and typological, are used as a conceptual framework for sustainable design. For this, research findings of the book, A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction, are employed as a conceptual guide, for analyzing a representative of a traditional courtyard house. In conjunction with the theoretical underpinnings of the Deep Beauty framework, the analysis utilizes photographs, drawings, and diagrams to support the arguments. The research shows that the traditional courtyard house possesses numerous attributes of sustainable design, which can be incorporated into contemporary house design.

There is growing apprehension about the well-being and substantiality of our planet due to global warming, rising energy consumption by the building sector, and depletion of natural resources. Architects and designers are in pursuit of the methodsthat may prove useful to limit the negative impacts of the buildingsector in order torespondto the changing needs of contemporary times. In Pakistan, along with the use and development of technologically advanced approaches, the revival of traditional vernacular architecture is seen as a way to achieve a sustainable future. In this study, the HarSukh Mansion, designed by the renowned traditionalist architect Kamil Khan Mumtaz, was evaluated based on the functional level of the Deep Beauty framework. In addition to examining the pragmatic needs of the users with respect to the building architecture, the case study also investigated the fundamentals of sustainable living, including modern passive energy strategies, recycling of natural resources, use of locally available building materials, and various traditional design elements and strategies. The analysis determined that Deep Beauty in architecture can be used to build a sustainable future for the building sector. Keywords: Deep beauty, energy-efficient, functional beauty, lifestyle, self-sufficient, sustainability, traditional architecture

In 1508 the legendary Sulṭān of Sindh, Niẓām al-Dīn Jām Nindō, of the Samma dynasty (1351–1522) died. The Sulṭān’s death occasioned a major political shift in Sindh at the turn of the sixteenth century, which ultimately led to the fall of the Sammas in 1522. This period is marked with repeated instances of military and civil unrests and dethroning attempts. The primary theme of this article is to demonstrate that these particular cycles of political instability defined the parameters of contemporary architectural undertakings. For this purpose, two of the most ambitious funerary constructions in the Samma royal necropolis of Maklī at Thatta (southern Sindh)—the tomb enclosure of Samma military commander Mubārak Khān and the monumental mausoleum of Sulṭān Niẓām al-Dīn—are reassessed. The article also locates political undertones in the architecture of these mausolea, and deciphers the implicit subtext interlaced into their epigraphic as well as visual motifs.