Soha Matour

Queensland University of Technology | QUT · School of Architecture, Design and Visual Arts

Despite natural light, near-façade structures' impact on Natural Ventilation (NV) performance, reducing cooling demand, is usually ignored by designers. This article aims to characterize interactions between balconies' design features (i.e. depth, unit level, and wind incident) and near-façade buildings on single-sided NV performance in a case stud...

Despite natural light, near-façade structures' impact on Natural Ventilation (NV) performance, reducing cooling demand, is usually ignored by designers. This article aims to characterise interactions between balconies' design features (i.e., depth, unit level, and wind incident) and near-façade buildings on single-sided NV performance in a case stu...

Natural Ventilation (NV) in buildings has a significant potential to reduce building energy use, provide thermal comfort and improve indoor air quality. NV potential is highly dependent on climatic conditions and may change over time due to global warming. To ensure a sustained and efficient NV design, it is necessary to identify the maximum potent...

Double Skin Facades (DSF) integrated with shading devices are increasingly implemented in tall buildings to protect the building from excessive solar radiation. However, the potential overheating of DSF in warm climates leads to lower DSF performance in hot seasons. In this study, a new type of DSF named Interstitial Slat-blind DSF (IS-DSF) has bee...

Mixed-mode (MM) ventilation strategy has been used in many buildings to reduce energy use. This strategy can be more effective if used along with ceiling fans (CF). The MM ventilation and CF energy-saving potentials are often evaluated under present climate conditions. However, their energy-saving potentials greatly depend on climate characteristic...

Ceiling fans can reduce the cooling demand in an indoor area, improve thermal comfort, and save energy. Despite the numerous potential advantages of applying ceiling fans, the literature shows that the uptake is still limited, due in part to the lack of concise information on the ceiling fan's impacts and methods of evaluating its performance. A cr...

Ceiling fans can reduce the cooling demand in an indoor area, improve thermal comfort, and save energy. Despite the numerous potential advantages of applying ceiling fans, the literature shows that the uptake is still limited, due in part to the lack of concise information on the ceiling fan's impacts and methods of evaluating its performance. A cr...

Insufficient airflow in the cavity of Double Skin façade (DSF) systems has resulted in the overheating risk of the cavity and the resulting reduction in thermal performance in cooling dominant climates. Previous research has focused more on buoyancy-driven natural ventilation, and there is a lack of research on utilising wind-driven ventilation in...

In this study, we discuss ways of affecting nature on contemporary architecture and utilise them to survey the naturalism of case studies of Iranian architecture. The basic question in this study is: 'how ways of utilising nature have influenced on contemporary public works of Iran?' Descriptive-analytic method is used to achieve the results. The l...

It is very important to monitor quality in building industry as well as find a way to synchronies this quality to the price of the building. The main issue of paper is to find a quality assessment method for building industry which influence the price of the buildings, and encourage better quality and promote more qualified building constructors. T...

Veranda as one of the main elements of spatial hierarchy in the traditional Iranian architecture is responsible for providing visual and thermal comfort and energy saving, in the interior and to some extent exterior besides enhancing both the privacy and accessibility as a transition space all around the building. In the Solar Decathlon China 2013...

To effectively design daylight in buildings, daylight availability data are necessary. Although there is a great potential of daylight energy in Iran, its use is hindered by absence of measured data. In this paper the illuminance data on vertical south facing surfaces of Tehran were estimated using IESNA model. For this propose an illuminance measu...

The Issue of daylight inclusion in the office buildings has got the significant importance in the recent years. Using this light, dependence on artificial lighting sources can be reduced which results in the energy efficiency. This study aims to determine the optimal Window Wall Ratios in the office buildings of Tehran to take the advantage of dayl...

Mosque architecture is considered as a potent visual symbol of the Islamic architects’ design ability. Prayer-hall as the manifestation of equality between the believers and the unity of architectural space has challenged such an ability throughout the history. This study, considering the characteristics of light-openings in the domes of Iranian mo...