Measuring Structural Environmental Awareness in Iraqi Architecture through AHP and Climatic Analysis
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Abstract
In many cases, the quality of the environment in Iraqi architecture is judged from the formal reading and the presence of what is inherited from the vocabulary is considered evidence of awareness of the environment. In this paper, an alternative criterion, structural criterion, is proposed and made measurable. The five criteria: Passive Climatic Response, Contextual and Urban Integration, Environmental Perception, Material and Resource Logic, and Structural Integration of Environmental Function are weighted using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and based on the solar geometry of Baghdad (33.3° N) for the development of a Structural Environmental Awareness Index (SEAI). Using the normalised geometric mean, the criterion weights were obtained from a reciprocal matrix with a consistency ratio of CR = 0.008. The building evidence is rated on a five-level evidence scale and added together to form an index with a 0–100 scale. It's used on two buildings in Baghdad, which respond to the same climate in different ways, and on opposite principles, fifty years apart: the Central Post Office by Rifat Chadirji (1975), which blocks the radiation but lets the diffuse light and air through, and the Central Bank of Iraq by Zaha Hadid Architects, which shades the glazing and carries the load with its structural exoskeleton. The Post Office obtained SEAI = 95.4 and the Central Bank SEAI = 85.9, which was maintained in all ten weight perturbations and under equal weights. On structural integration, the two works get the same score, which means that the screen and the exoskeleton are structurally similar and that environmental awareness is a structural principle and not a period style. This margin is primarily on material and resource logic, when structure, mass and enclosure is released simultaneously by means of load-bearing masonry. The numerical values are a demonstration of the instrument and need to be confirmed by the expert elicitation and dynamic simulation before making inferential claims.
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