Seventeenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

This paper discusses three examples of built architecture that successfully connects climate to people. The examples were chosen among patios, courtyards, or balconies in which vegetation, soil, and animals contributed to create outdoor rooms that nurture physiological and phenomenologically a single person while fostering a communal delight; among relatively dense urban contexts and middle and low income realities, and among real experience and oral or written descriptions of other authors. The parameters of discussion were: the designer and execution of the courtyard, the role that climatic knowledge played in their creation, and the qualities that make them effective in causing architectural pleasure and climatic delight. The examples were: the spontaneous courtyard of HAP gallery in Budapest, Hungary; a modern courtyard designed by an architect in a seaside hotel in Istanbul, Turkey; and a Communal courtyard that was not made by an architect in Alto Comedero Housing Project in San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina. It was concluded that: low and middle income realities could be improved if dwellers were aware of the cheap yet luxurious benefits that climate in architecture can give; spontaneous courtyards should be increased but not through standardization; climate has a paramount importance over human experience through architecture but city dwellers are unaware of this and don’t know how to work with climate; and finally the pursuit for a “minimum existence” should be replaced for the pursuit for intimate and shared maximum climatic delight in dense urban contexts.