In the old traditional houses, the inner central courtyard was the focal point of the house. Most of the rooms, if not all of them, are directly connected to the courtyard. Privacy is the watchword for the courtyard as expressed by maximizing interior relationships and openness, while excluding the exterior. In addition to its socio-cultural role as family gathering spaces, the courtyard provides daylight from the shade, airflow and thermal comfort inside the rooms of the house, factors that help to create more or less comfortable living conditions during the day and sleeping conditions at night. The main objective of this research is to investigate the impact of the courtyard's socioenvironment quality on the degree of the occupant satisfaction as well as on their perceptual behaviour in traditional houses with central courtyards in the oasis of M'chouneche. The survey has been used as a method for data collection. A questionnaire was the tool addressed by the researcher in a faceto-face mode with 18 householders. These latter lived in these traditional houses. The analysis of the collected data was undertaken by using STATISTICA software and mainly based on descriptive and inferential statistics. The results illustrate the influence of the socio-cultural and organizational role that the courtyard plays on the level of user satisfaction. As conclusion, M'chouneche traditional courtyard houses were designed founded on a considerable interest to climatic requirements in their socio-cultural context, in order to provide both physical and psychological comforts for residents.

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During the recent few decades, fully glazed facade system has been increasingly used in Algeria. While neglecting its climatic impacts, this design trend is always tangible especially for office buildings. This article presents the main results of a survey carried out for 49 selected office buildings. These latter are located in the three different climatic zones of Algeria.The study is specially focused on these office buildings' designers. This research main objective is to inquiry about the glazed facade architecture in Algeria and to expose architects' points of view about the building glazed envelop in relation to climate factors. A face-to-face administered questionnaire survey has been used for this field study. The investigation results highlight Algerian architects' desire for office buildings with large glass facades even if most of them (90%) agreed that this kind of facades causes overheating and discomfort glare problems. Besides, the architects' preference for a glazed façade is revealed as being more associated to psychological and physiological aspects than to the consequent environmental impact. In addition to the positive features that the glazed facades can provide for a building, in Algeria, some constraints and problems remain for its on-site use. Finally, and from design' practice point of view, the investigation outcomes point out that the 30%-40% window-to-wall ratio is judged as the lowest for the hot and dry climate regions characterized by a clear sunny sky.

IEQ (Indoor Environmental Quality), POE (Post-occupancy evaluation), POE Protocols (Post-occupancy evaluation Protocols), CO (carbon monoxide), CO2 (carbon dioxide), IAQ (indoor air quality), PM (particulate matters), RH (relative humidity), AT (air temperature), TVOC (total volatile organic compound).POE is an invaluable tool, it is considered as a systematic assessment process to assess the quality of a building's indoor environment, including thermal, visual, acoustic and indoor air quality conditions. (Peixian et al., 2018). For this reason, many post-occupancy evaluations approaches have been applied over the past decades to improve future architectural design.

Oasis houses are known for their sensitive architectural response to the region's climatic conditions and socio-cultural norms. Courtyard is one of the invariants in oasis architectural forms that contributed in determining climatic, physical and psychological interior environment. Given its effectiveness as an interior micro climatic regulatory element, the daylight behavior of the courtyard in this type of houses is one of the most important passive strategies that can affect the nature of activities and the use of space in a daily manner, Without having to use the interior spaces to do various tasks. In this respect, this article presents an experimental study carried out to clarify the impact of the courtyard on visual efficiency of oasis houses located in the city of M'chouneche (Biskra), using simulation software on model of a real house. The simulation process was carried out at solstice days and spring equinox, taking into account the climatic data of the city of M'chouneche. The experimental results confirm that the obtained quantity of daylight in the most of interior spaces no matter it is not compatible with the required values, gives certain balance with the life style of occupant and the use of courtyard its self.