Access to the appropriate quality and quantity of water is very important during the building life cycle and various stages of construction and operation. The fundamental importance of water is evident from the fact that two of the 17 sustainable development goals are directly related to water. Hot and dry climatic conditions, low rainfall and high evaporation, improper use of limited water resources, and pollution of quantitative and qualitative water crises have been determined on different scales in Iran. A large part of water loss occurs at the building scale (residential, commercial, and official). Therefore, in many parts of the country, especially in arid and semi-arid regions, it's inevitable the need to adopt strategies for the optimal use of water resources in the construction sector. The present study investigates the use of alternative water resources, water resources recovery methods to achieve net-zero water BUILDINGS, focusing on methods of reducing water consumption at the building scale. The research method is descriptive-analytical with a qualitative study. The data collection tool is a review of written sources, documents, and previous studies, and the method of data analysis is content analysis. Findings indicate that the creation and utilization of a sustainable water cycle in the building through rainwater harvesting systems, gray water collection and treatment systems as alternative water sources, collection, and treatment of black water to charge aquifers, or injection into water supply sources can provide a platform for the realization of the net-zero BUILDINGS.

Today, civil constructions constitute most of electrical energy consumption. To reduce the consumption, man has been led to look for renewable sources of energy as a replacement. This is consequence necessitate further studies in this field and related area. One of the options was to utilize daylight during the day hour in place of electrical power, which in turn needed special preparation. Daylighting provides the opportunity for both energy savings and improved visual comfort and Certainly energy savings . With proper integration of a well-designed artificial lighting system, daylighting can offer significant energy savings by reducing a portion of electric lighting load. An extra benefit is the lowering of cooling load due to the reduction in heat gain from electric lamps. In addition to energy savings, daylighting helps create visually pleasing and productive environment for building occupants. Although windows are likely to remain the most common means of admitting daylight into BUILDINGS, they have no intrinsic properties to redirection effects, the opening of the building envelope need to be equipped with additional optical devices, either in addition to the windows or even incorporated into them. The resulting combinations of elements are called ‘advanced daylighting systems’. These equipments are designed to redirect sunlight or skylight to areas where it is required, without glare. In the BUILDINGS of Tehran, artificial light is considered as the main contributor to the visual environment, even though there is an abundance of daylight during that part of the day known as ‘office hours’. This source of light could be subjected to more places study to determine proper means for optimum use of that source. This study has aimed to finding and estimating one of advanced systems of utilizing daylight called ‘horizontal light pipe’, to the extent of estimating quality and quantity of illuminance in the office room with a deep plan and any environment like this. Horizontal light pipes designed for sunny and partly sunny skies are a promising solution for supplementing daylight in deep-plan BUILDINGS. Light pipes collect and transport sunlight over long distances to the core of a building, which is composed of 4 parts: reflecting chamber, reflector, diffusing chamber and glazing openings. This system is designed to fit within the ceiling plenum. In this study a logical argument method has been used. For that, Autodesk Ecotect analysis and Radiance simulation software has been used, light pipe has been designed and analyzed in accordance with Tehran solar lighting condition. The study shows an increase in daylight illuminance levels in the bottom half of the room and far from the window aperture (quantity of the illuminance) also improve the uniformity of the daylighting luminance gradient across the room (quality of the illuminance) under variable solar condition throughout the year, should this system be adapted. In addition, determined the appropriate length of light pipe (9 meter) for more performance in the BUILDINGS. Based on simulation results, for uniform distribution of illuminance with better quality across the room, one light pipe is required in every 4 meter.

The airflow rate through a two-story building with a courtyard, with and without trees, was estimated and compared with that of a building without a courtyard. The building and the courtyard were of square shapes, each 10 m to the side. The courtyard walls were 3m high and two separate trees of spherical, cylindrical and conical shapes were considered in the yard. The courtyard was directly south of the building and a wind angle of zero degree was considered when the wind was blowing directly from the south. It was found that when the wind angles were between 0 to ± 90 degrees, the airflow rate through the building was reduced when compared with the building without a courtyard. The presence of trees in the courtyard further reduced the airflow rate. When the wind angle was 180 degrees, i.e., when the courtyard was in the lee-ward side of the wind, the airflow rate through the building was increased, and the presence of the trees in the courtyard further increased the flow rate. By considering the wind speeds and directions for the cities of Ahwaz, Kerman, Mashad, Shiraz, Tabriz and Tehran, Iran, the airflow rates were estimated for the BUILDINGS located in these cities. The effect of a courtyard and its trees in reducing the airflow rates (or increasing it, under special wind directions) were then determined.

More than one third of the world populations and 20 million people of rural areas located in Iran are living in BUILDINGS made of earthen materials. Structural performance of such BUILDINGS revealed to be weak and easily broken if exposed to any lateral earthquake load that inhibit on-time reactions and initiatives of its residents during earthquake.Despite the adobe infirmity and instability against lateral tensions, construction of adobe made BUILDINGS would bring about further reduction of operating costs and emission of environmental pollutants compared to other brickwork materials. Therefore, strengthening adobe tensional solidity would enable its public use in construction of a variety of BUILDINGS. Remained samples of ancient architecture scaled as public structures quite often have become stable through transformation of tensional forces into compressive ones. Lots of arcs and arches corroborate the idea behind such efforts. However, modular and micro scale residential architecture rule out construction of such huge arches and arcs. Reinforcement of adobe made BUILDINGS could be achieved through three areas of restructuring, structural material composition and strengthening adobe solidities. Restructuring is enabled through enhancement of material quality, increasing solidity of lateral walls specifically in the corners, lightening the structure and strengthen infrastructures and bases of the building.Considering adobe made BUILDINGS, walls are major issues in building seismic performance. Strengthening the structure stability requires minimization of load concentration on walls (e.g. using horseshoe forms of opening portals or application of underpinning plates meant for load distribution).Walls should be constructed as simple as possible with minimum fractures. Reinforcing adobe solidity through mechanical approaches and increasing pressure and density without any stabilizers requires concentration of adobe seeds and formation of an average aggregated block and capillary property. Regarding physical approach, strengthening adobe movements would be achieved through increasing appropriate stabilizer and creation of restraining network.With regards to strengthening techniques of adobe made BUILDINGS and existing standards in Iran (such as guideline no. 2800, 8th chapter, concerning instructions for making building materials and existing standards focusing construction of stabilized adobe made blocks and studies of composing optimized adobe used in reformation and renovation of Arg-e- Bam and Chaghazanbil temple), stabilized adobe made block plan for strengthening adobe made BUILDINGS in Iran has been investigated in the present study.Considering characteristics and features of existing soil, evaluation of proposed adobe made block solidity requires a variety of walls’ cross-sections. Stabilization of such idea and performance test of sample wall made of compressed adobe made building requires to be compared with computerized modeling and simulation of similar structures made of simple brick block and vertical skein. Although such system has achieved lower scores compared to common brickwork walls, it is in accordance with existing guidelines. Proposed system enables designers and drawers to consider required equivalent solidification for walls and its skeins that would bring about more accurate design, less total cost of the structure and eliminate the need for high certainty factor. In addition the said system is capable of designing multi-floor BUILDINGS far better than common traditional types.

Private BUILDINGS comprise an important category of BUILDINGS throughout Iran’s history including during the second Pahlavi era (1941-1975). In fact, the architecture of BUILDINGS in this era is worth studying because it has formed the basis of most of the current architecture of Iran’s BUILDINGS. The architecture of private BUILDINGS during the second Pahlavi era was influenced by various factors including the design and structure of the governmental and public BUILDINGS. There has been a certain degree of copying from the architecture of governmental BUILDINGS which was to some extent consistent with the climate conditions of Iran. This indeed helped press ahead the knowledge of architecture in the country.Accordingly, the stage was set for the development of a non-indigenous expertise which has live up to today. Therefore, it is important to study the roots of what eventually formed the architecture in Iran. This is the core objective of the present research. In fact, it tries to find out the reasons for the influence of the architecture of governmental and public BUILDINGS on the architecture of certain private BUILDINGS. The research is based on applied historical, causative, descriptive and analytical methods. Also, data collection is based on library research and interviews with experts.The study and findings reveal that there are four reasons for this influence: 1) Characteristics of the governmental and public BUILDINGS, 2) Characteristics and situation of the private section; 3) Intermediate factors, and 4) Marginal and background factors. The latter factor has been the most effective and the second factor has been the least effective in this regard. In other words, facilities and conditions such as “factors which lead communities toward a new culture and …”, “the new aesthetic view out of the modern technology and industry”, “promotion of new cultural viewpoints and …”; “financial recourses as well as their determinants of their amounts and …” and “the quality of the political organization of the country” are of special importance concerning the architecture influences.In addition, the influencing factors i.e. characteristics of the governmental and public BUILDINGS have been more effective than the influenced factors, i.e. characteristics and situation of the private section. Also the direct effect of the governmental and public BUILDINGS has been more serious than indirect effect of the intermediate factors. Moreover, studies show that the most effective indices in the framework of the related factors are as follows: building age, conformity with the aesthetic views of the wealthy class of the society, and their will for pattern-making, some private BUILDINGS which have been influenced by the public building, promotion of the new cultural approaches, etc.The other effective factors on the architecture of the private BUILDINGS under the influence of the public BUILDINGS in the second Pahlavi dynasty are: perfect dependency of the country’s economic and political organization, extreme tendency toward the West, promotion of the new cultural approaches, concentration of the activities in large cities specifically Tehran and the related migration, private BUILDINGS, none-expert people, and researches on architecture. It must be noted that there is a difference between the private-public BUILDINGS and the architecture of the private residential BUILDINGS.

Neurology, as one of the novel sciences, paves the way toward understanding the performance of the human mind and also the surrounding environment. As one of the most complicated body organs, the human brain processes all the information received from external stimuli through five senses and intuitive, emotional, and rational perceptions. Neuroscience can connect the brain and architectural space to achieve the desired outcome and targets for designers and architects. On the other hand, the city views play a key role in users' feelings. Therefore, this research aimed to investigate the effect of neuroscience on architecture and the effect of facade elements on brain stimuli to design the desired view. In this research, seven BUILDINGS (three traditional and four contemporary) were investigated by a survey research method. To do this, three hundred eighty-five questionnaires were randomly distributed between passengers in seven districts. The results obtained from these questionnaires showed a significant relationship between neuroscience and architecture and how the facade elements affect the sensory stimuli. In addition, the traditional BUILDINGS in Sari and a contemporary building named “ residential building era 94” had the physical and contextual elements (such as color, form, texture and materials, rhythm, fitness, etc. ) in their facades, which seemed attractive for the passengers. The physical stimuli in these BUILDINGS, such as diversity, materials, forms, color, and texture, play a role in better connecting passengers with the facade of these BUILDINGS.