The Sustainability of ‘Time-Proof’ Buildings: Lessons from The Alhambra Palace
Garcia-Templado, G. Alejandra & Wilhelmij, G. Paul. Qatar Green Building Conference 2017. Future Sustainable Cities – Liveable Public Realm
The palatial buildings erected between the 9th and 14th centuries by Spain’s Islamic rulers constitute a recurrent reference for current design practice. Iconic monumental complexes such as the Alhambra Palace in Granada, have been architectural models over centuries of their grounded environmental, social and – mainly in recent times economic – sustainability.
Their intricate programs and architectural usage types are made up of both public and private spaces which have shown a remarkable level of adaptation according to evolving and different user requirements. The Alhambra Palace shows that the nature of such a building environment, with its high standard of habitability, comfort and enjoyment – thus, its liveability – has changed over time, transitioning through various stages from a highly habitable semi-public building to what is now a highly public but not-lived-in complex.
The evolution of the amount and allocation of such spaces blurs the limits of their architectural and urban qualities. However clearly there are associated design principles which underpin and contribute to the sustainability of such palatial typology.
With the aim of learning from significant built examples from the past – specifically from Islamic Andalusian Palaces – and to identify design principles that can be considered when developing sustainable and liveable contemporary projects, an architectural descriptive framework that combines quantitative and qualitative natures has been developed by the authors.
This framework has been shaped based on the analysis of spatial patterns related to this palatial typology, within the context of the contemporary design process. It provides a way to facilitate a systematic assessment of different aspects of the built environment to which it is applied, including sustainability and related areas.
Application of the descriptive framework to the Alhambra Palace shows how such a descriptive tool can enrich our understanding of sustainable historic buildings and help modern-day designers apply associated sustainability and other core factors in contemporary design practice.
Learning Objectives
- Explore the limits of spatial qualities such as public/private and liveable/non-liveable considering factors of scale, usage, ownership or management as demarcators between urban and architectural realms.
- Understand the term liminality and its relevance when assessing the sustainability of architectural and urban designs.
- Increase awareness of architectural descriptions as overarching tools to improve the design process and assessment of core design principles and parameters.
- Demonstrate the practicality of the descriptive tool by applying it to the Alhambra Palace, thus enriching its depiction from a contemporary perspective.
- Identify parameters included in the descriptive tool related to social, environmental and economic sustainability
Keywords: Public, liveable, liminality, Alhambra Palace, liminality, sustainability, design process, architectural descriptions
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