climatic compatibility of courtyard houses, based on shading sunlit index; case studies: traditional houses in kashan & ardabil cities

Today, access to sustainable environment for more presence of humans in open spaceshould improve the quality of open spaces and human thermal comfort. hence, the courtyard as an openspace is an important element in solar radiation absorption and providing thermal comfort. the aim of thispaper is to investigate the climatic performance of traditional courtyard houses, according to shading andsunlit in two cities with different climates: kashan city (hotarid climate) and ardabil city (cold climate).in order to carry out this research, firstly ten types of traditional houses in kashan and ardabil werechosen. , thereafter, the shadow and sunlit in almost all floors and walls of courtyards were calculated andanalyzed in june and december using ecotect software simulations. in order to assess the compatibilitylevel of the selected historical samples of each city with the region’s climate, the average of a compositeindexes (shadingsunlit index of walls and floor) of the selected houses in two cities have been compared.the average shadingsunlit index for the houses in kashan is 0.43 and for the selected houses in ardabilis 0.40; meaning that in both cities, the houses are relatively compatible with the region’s climate and thecases in kashan city show more compatible to some extent. also the results of studies demonstrate that incase studies in both cities, the amount of shaded surfaces have appropriate climate compatibility in warmmonths; while, in terms of sunlit, they do not have an appropriate climate compatibility in cold months.