The local effects on the architectural characters of schools during Islamic era in Syria

The architectural character of the schools in the Islamic Ages influenced by many factors including: first cultural factors: civilizations pre-Islamic Sassanian in Iraq, Byzantine and Hellenistic in Syria. Secondly environmental factors: we mean here the climate and building materials that have affected the formations prevailing, for example covered patios prevailed in cold regions, while the open patios used in temperate and desert regions. While the availability of local building materials serve to in the adoption of a particular style building: at a time we find the prevalence of clay or earth architecture in Iraq, Stone Architecture diffused in both Egypt and Syria. Thirdly, the political factors that also play a role in shaping the schools character, where the rules effected on the architecture. So Egypt in Tulunid was affected by Iraqi architecture due to Ahmad Ibn Tulun who was the ruler from Iraqi origin. However, there were other factors which contributed to create the difference between schools building at the same time; The architecture in Egypt differ from its contemporary in Syria even it was different in the same place among cities, the architecture in Aleppo didn't like the ones in Damascus. So we wonder about the importance of the local effects on designing early schools during the Islamic era. In this paper, we will recite the evolution of Islamic school throughout history, then we'll focus on the local effects of the place such as the climate and regional building material, as well as the effective factors on the architecture characters generally, finally, we will study the character of school building in Islamic eras in order to find the most powerful factors that are affected on building schools throughout various Islamic eras.

The Morphological and Syntactical characteristics of the internal courtyard (main) as a determinant of the spatial orientation of the university buildings (Case study internal courtyard in Syrian universities)

There have been numerous studies dealing with the environmental and social aspects of the type of buildings with internal courtyards, through studying the functions of the internal courtyard, environmental, utilitarian, social and formative. but these studies did not address the importance of internal courtyard in achieving the ease of spatial orientation, through its role in easy access to the space required In buildings in general, and in university buildings in particular. The research starts from the following hypothesis: The morphological and Syntactical characteristics of the internal courtyard of the university buildings affect the ease of orientation of the users, and aims to identify these characteristics that achieve easy access to the goal. For this purpose, including theoretical and practical colleges, where a special description of the morphological characteristics of the internal courtyard in the university buildings, and determinants that help the designer in the use of the internal courtyard in designing of spatial configurations of the university buildings to achieve the ease of spatial orientation.