PHENOMENOLOGICAL AND THERMAL DIMENSIONS OF IN- BETWEEN SPACES IN LAHORE'S VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

Urban heat and climatic change are the accelerating worldwide necessity for sustainable urban development. Particularly in the face of intensifying urban heat and a changing global climate, creates a critical need for architectural responses that thoroughly connects human experiences with environmental performances. This work is motivated by the fact that historical vernacular construction techniques, once provided complex and climatic responsive solutions in building enclosures, are not as widely observed in contemporary practices, despite their potential to organize a more embodied relationship between inhabitants and their environment. The current body of architectural literature emphasizes passive design strategies and thoroughly examines the methods for mitigating the effects of climate change while ensuring thermal comfort in building envelops. Likewise, the relevance of In-between spaces or the liminal zones that bridges the interior and exterior environments has been widely acknowledged due to their social role and potential to influence human interaction in urban fabrics. Regardless, of this informative responses there remains a critical research gap: a limited exploration into how particular vernacular “In between spaces”, serves simultaneously as experiential thresholds (forming human behavior and producing embodied knowledge) and as climatic buffers (passively providing thermal comfort). More specifically not much has been explored about the phenomenological epistemology of how the felt experience of climatic improvement within urban corridor actively informs user’s distinct understanding and adaptive practice. In attempt to bridge this gap, this qualitative phenomenological study investigates vernacular “In between spaces” of Gali Surjan Singh in walled city of Lahore, Pakistan. This paper introduces a human-based sustainable living model that links experiential design emphasizing more informed and embodied epistemologies of thermal comfort in a space.