No abstract

Housing is one of the basic needs for humans. Families in different countries with various cultures, who have different life styles respond to their individual needs including physical and mental in a safe place that is called house. The world population is increasing day by day. In parallel to this population growth, housing demand increases rapidly. Thus, different countries try to meet the needs of housing by creating multifarious housing policies. Generally, these policies have been developed according to countries' special conditions and the developments in the world. Iran is also a country, which has a rapid population growth and has developed series of policies to solve the housing problems. Affordable housing is one of solution for providing the house by governments. These type of houses is the ways to answer the demand for low-income people or the people that their income is not sufficient to owner a house. Since 2007, government has built new type of affordable housing in different cities of Iran. These houses are named as Mehr Housing, which are generally medium and high-rise buildings for low-income people. In this study, it is intended to make an evaluation about the strengthens and weaknesses of Mehr Housing projects in Iran in terms of housing quality. In order to evaluate the architectural quality of Mehr Housing projects in Sarvestan,

Cyprus is one of the oldest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, where human settlements can be traced. Over the centuries, it was governed by different states. Under the influence of each cultural milieu various periods were developed in the history of Cyprus. Each period reflects the age and its social life style, economic conditions, technological opportunities, religion and political structure. Today, it is possible to observe lots of architectural examples from the various periods. Some of them have been demolished under the effects of time and physical factors. However, the strong and well-designed structures carried their most important parts to the present. In this study, the structural evolution is investigated under the influence of different architectural periods of Cyprus. It starts with the pre-historic times of the island and continues until the beginning of modern times. Various structural systems and building materials are all discussed bearing in mind the historical development and changing conditions of Cyprus. In other words, the practice of different structural systems in architecture is argued in related to the environment, social requirements and life styles which reflect the influences of the sustainable design.