Contextualism: A Strategy for Achieving Sustainable Architecture

Abstract

Sustainability and context-based design is a recent issue in architecture. Architecture of each building is designed and implemented based on cultural, social, historical, climatic and specific conditions of the site and the building. Therefore, the building is ecology -consistent and elemental- coherent in its context and ultimately in the environment. All-round attention to environmental, social and economic issues in sustainable architecture is an attempt to benefit from the potential of the field and the design context. In the meantime, the sustainability approach is a balanced and comprehensive development of the sectors, because sustainability is realized when all these sectors develop and grow in a balanced and coherent way. In addition, the conditions necessary to establish strong relationships between sectors and the context of the plan should be available. In a sustainable design, the architect and urban planner must first consider features of a location in the field as a crucial issue in design process. Consequently, building is a small part of its peripheral nature in the contextual architecture. This paper aims to introduce contextualism as one of the main principles of sustainability. Accordingly, the present article seeks to study the effect of sustainability components on the creation of contextual architecture. The study is descriptive-analytical using library and documentary studies for collecting data. The results show that sustainable architecture is a multi-value combination that can emerge in a complete process with maximum compatibility with the design context.