Designing Private Outdoor Spaces for Socio-Environmental Sustainability:

The case of Koya traditional housing

Abstract

This study explores the potential of traditional outdoor spaces for the sustainable development of urban housing in Iraq, with a focus on socio-environmental values, namely: equality of privacy, safety, and environmental quality. Such values played a major role in forming private outdoor spaces in Iraq's traditional housing. Thus, the this study discusses possible designs of private outdoor spaces in terms of forms, locations, and components for achieving these values by designing private outdoor spaces based on socio-environmental sustainability. To do this, the old city of Koya in Iraq was chosen because it is rich in architectural heritage and still contains traditional houses inhabited at present. Five famous types of private outdoor design are chosen in terms of their relationship with the indoor; four types represent the yard approach in the courtyard houses, and one represents the strip approach in the individual houses. A questionnaire was also designed to determine the extent of the resident'sresidents' satisfaction with the external spaces of these houses. By comparing the types mentioned above, the benefits gained by the community from following the yard approach were identified as a recommended future strategy for housing design. Then, each form of the courtyard houses was analyzedanalysed to understand the possible uses of each one. The paper's main finding is to establish a guideline for achieving socio-environmental values in housing design. This approach can be a high-potential step for achieving sustainable development in Iraq. The main conclusion of the study sustains that different outdoor forms —U-shaped, O-shaped, L-shaped¸, and combined shapes of inner spaces —lead to different benefits that help achieve social and environmental sustainability in different uses, the most important of which are: achieving privacy, and safety, without affecting environmental quality, and in a simple manner.