Abstract: Courtyard Houses have been most popular in residential architecture all over the world and in all climatic regions. Courtyard can be square, rectangular, round or amorphous, generated by placement of rooms or buildings around it. In hot arid climates such houses provide a greater measure of comfort. The courtyards supply light and cool air to the rooms around it. Air circulation within this confined space relies largely on the proportions of the surrounding walls and positioning of window openings in the surrounding rooms. This research is aimed at assessing the user perception of courtyard as a thermal regulator in house-holds, Famagusta, employing a descriptive survey design. 30 questionnaires were distributed between October-November 2017, targeting households both in the ancient and urban cities of Famagusta. The questionnaire in this study was designed to extract information from users on how, when, what and why they use the courtyard. Results were analysed in SPSS v. 2.1 for means (M) and percentages (%), which were used to rank the importance of variables. Findings revealed that majority of the respondents do want a courtyard and prefer using it during evening and noon hours of summer period as it does improve the indoor air quality of the house-holds tremendously, in which quite a number of respondents have admitted to it makes them sleep better and thus, prefer their courtyards to be big-medium sized.
Keywords: Courtyard, Households, Climate, Thermal regulator.
Title: User Perception of Courtyard as a Thermal Regulator in Households, Famagusta, Cyprus
Author: Aisha Kabir Marafa, Halil Zafer Alibaba
International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Innovations
ISSN 2348-1218 (print), ISSN 2348-1226 (online)
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